DEDICATION:
This book is dedicated to an old flame of mine who still burns brightly.
Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d also like to give special thanks to all those who read these words and give me their
honest opinions, both before and after the poems are done.

Drunken Misdemeanor
Passion-filled lips
Press against the empty-hearted
Full-minded body
Of a struggling,
Awkward speaking
Man, who, in a moment
Will break away
From the sour kiss
To explain the reasons
Why this is not the time
Nor the place
To try to light a new flame
And mislead the heart
Toward a new obsessive thought
Of possible love
It’s only a drunken misdemeanor
The alcohol in the blood
Producing the teasing sensations
That make the body desire flesh
Any flesh, as long as it is willing
To connect
Joining together with
The battered, unstable mind
That speaks aloud
Quietly in the night
As the body sleeps
And dreams restlessly
Of the lives that can only be lived
And maintained
In fantasy
Brushing lips together
Doesn’t strike the chords of guilt
To the logic able to overpower the heart
As it is able to still pull the body away
From what could soon turn to a felony
Breaking the connection
Partly out of the other’s soberly seen undesirability
And the sweet calling
Of solitude
Who waits patiently
For her lover
To return

Sweatfall
Two interlocked bodies
Move together
Like a seesaw of passion
The softer, gentler lover
A poet of words
Observes the exchange
Of a man and a woman breathing in each other
Through the steady motions
They learned of
From their own innate primitiveness
And the sweetness of the experience
Propagated by their blessed motherland
The poet is consumed
By the imagery that arises from lovemaking
The dampness and humidity
That comes solely
From the lower parts of the human form
And makes the room smell of sex
And fleshly desire
There is only what the poet can pen
As being sweatfall
The hot rain that pours down
Off the skin
As the two animals
Push forward and deeper
Into the maddening heat
Of each other
Awakening a core of the self
That had slept patiently
Until wakened
By the flooding ocean
Of pleasure
That cannot be feigned
As climax is met
And the two return from their heavenly venture
The poet
That sweet, gentle soul
Can only recall the word he has stumbled across
In trying to capture the idiosyncrasy
That falls from the body
Like summer rain

Tongue To Tongue
Two red muscles
That lay in wait
During the hours
That the body need not speak
Press against each other
Trying to tangle
And choke the other
In a form of oral pleasure
A sadistic and masochistic ritual
That has been deeply ingrained in the memories
Of the human flesh
Each person, no matter who the creator
Desires to find
A tongue to press its own against
So that it can start its travel
Down the saliva-river
Of pleasure
That past scholars and poets
Have tried to label as being
A kiss
The wizened kisser
Who has opened gateways
By experiencing on multiple levels
The sweetness and sorrowfulness
Of the river that travels from the mouth to the soul
Knows that sometimes
When the kiss is about finished
And the tongue has reached the end of the river
Only the moonlit night of the soul
Is able to greet them
Luring them close to the emptiness
That dwells within another
By having a maiden in a white dress appear
Singing softly to the sky
A song that reawakens memories
In the heart of a fallen angel
Who grows more devilish
Each time his lips part
To try to relocate or discover anew
The saliva-river that could lead his heart
To the place of redemption
Where maidenless
He will lay with his beloved

Breathless
A sensation like drowning
And breathlessness
Overpowers belittled lips
That never sought to kiss
The hungry mouth
Grown fat
From its insatiable desires
The lesser of the two
Still a child
Jumping from stone to stone
Prays that his youth
Will not end
As long as he continues to step gracefully
Remaining dry and unscarred
From the greater
Who seeks to undermine
And absorb
His delectable flesh
Attempting to reassure the child
That the moments may seem pleasureless
Only because the body is experiencing them for the first time
The child cries
And his fragile mind tries to recreate the happening
As if it were only a nightmare to be wakened from
The boyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hands wrapped tightly around his blanket
The nightlight still shining its warm green glow
Keeping the demons away
But the child stirs from his delusions
As he feels the real cracks upon his lips
Put there by a harsh lover
Who sought to render him powerless
By introducing the child
To the wicked ways of the flesh
That cause those
Who have been absorbed, consumed, and forgotten
To meander dreamlessly
Back toward the river of childhood
Where the stepping stones
Remain unmoved
And the child who intended to stay and remain young forever
Now finds himself blue, choked, breathless
Sleeping on the watersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; floor

Guided By Desire
A half-fortuitous
Puddle of blood
Belonging to a endlessly dreaming soul
Whimpers in its hopefulness
That it will either
Be soaked up
By the shawl of its beloved
Or have a semi-permanent desirer
Come to step in its wetness
Allowing the blood to cling temporarily
To the shoe of the passerby
Who is unaware of the delightfulness
His small, unnoticed touch
Is able to have
For a broken soul
And though the blood
May become mixed with sand
And dried
Upon the manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sole
The blood
Still linked to the heart
Of its misguided owner
Maintains its dignity
From the simple pleasure
Of having been stepped on
By the foot of a Brahman
A man, who if not separated by class and caste,
Would surely reach out
To soak up all of the precious blood
Belonging to the soul
Who does not cry aloud because of its sadness
But rather from its forever escaping dream
Of being able
To join hands
And sway in heavenly motions
With its should-be-lover
Yet the blood is
Left only to experience
The secondary heart-lifting
Moments that arise from
A man who is too busy looking in front of him
To have a single thought concerning
Where his foot will fall

Stammering Heartbeat
A gentle unspoken request
Pulls a sleeping mind
From its rest
And the sudden wakefulness of the body
Sends adrenaline
Rushing through the loose
Heavy-feeling limbs that still half-consciously dream
As eyes open and search desperately
To reaffirm that there is no unfamiliarity
Within the sanctuary
Of this angel’s safe haven
The senses becoming aware
Of the closeness of another,
Another who has become so commonplace
As the other dimensions of the room
That he can sometimes be overlooked
In his ability to exist independently
Outside of the four corners
That structure the sleeping grounds
Of his beloved
Wholeheartedly he seduces her
Having the first sleepy kiss
Be the bodily transition
From dream into fairytale
Where he is able to envelope her
Forgetting the unimportant notions of his mind
That try to convince him
He is not taken seriously
By this woman, god’s perfectly sculpted beauty
Whose form can create living poetry
With the most delicate of embraces
Causing those who are of mortal blood
And simple flesh
To fall to their knees
Desperately pleading
For even one of her fingers
To touch against their forehead
So that the mind can be cured from its deliriousness
Caused from having set eyes upon a beauty so fair
That the heart cannot stop its stammering
Whether or not
It’s awake or asleep

Indirect Motioning
Standing still like the long forgotten
In a sea of people that wear a blank expression
A woman goes unnoticed, the music continuing to play on
The rhythmic beats that swing and sway
The bodies that are no longer of their own possession
As they belong to the song
And the unseen composer
Who sits, silently watching from a distance
In his box seats
The simple moves that must be taken
In order to transform a civilized nation
Into dancers whose greatest pain
Is knowing that closing time must eventually come
The long forgotten
With her green dress
Ending only a few inches after her knee
Looks up and across the swarm of people
To see hands beckoning her
Calling her for the most intimate
Of dances
Under a starless sky
As she approaches closer and closer
She sizes up his figure
His classical dress and elegant wavering of hands
Knowing that he must be of some richness
Even if it only be of his own self-worth
Adorning him
With the most delicate glance
Her forgottenness dissipates
And she feels sweetly again
Her heart beating with the desire
For another
Now wishing to dance
Every dance possible
Until closing time
Yet as she arrives before him
She notices in his eyes an unawareness
As his body, as if on a timer
Beckons her again
With an indirect motion

A Peck on the Cheek
Her first attempt is too forceful
The words from her mouth
Not trying to cover up her intentions
To ravish the body
Until it is drained dry of its juices
And weakened so that it struggles to stand
Without the support of a concrete wall
Constantly by its side
The second attempt is poorer
The other body having kindly stated before
That it did not have similar wants
Or intentions,
Desiring not to kiss the mouth or the breasts of one so seeking self-gratification
Finding the figure
To be unattractive
Bearable enough to be friends
And have a mild
Association with
This creature of sexual deviation
Who would most likely never finds its mate
Due to its unpleasant bone structure
And inability to carry its own weight
The third attempt is pitiful
The brains of the woman
Too small to comprehend rejection
Causing for the heartfelt poet
To reach out
Not to grant the wish
Of the frantic body
But to offer
A sympathetic kiss
A simple peck on the cheek
To build the barrier
That limits the intentions
Of a figure that further decreases its appeal
With every desperate attempt
To try to embrace
A mate it is unworthy of
As it fails to strike
The chords of desire
Needed to make
Love happen

Gently Bent
Her neck is gently bent
Too proud to be lowered to the same level
As the animals
Slaughtered at the guillotine
For wrongdoings
That cannot be considered human
She knows herself
To be a woman of intellect
A fly-by-night
Irreducible, unlike the others
Who fall
Like the stupid creatures they are
Unable to rationalize
Of the soul that shall persist
After the body falls and decays
Transcendence, to them, being nothing more
Than a word spoken by
The overeducated
Unwilling to bring themselves
To the same level
As the beasts that till their soil
Keeping beauty as it is
Yet remaining an unseen
Disregarded shadow
Never granted any more
Than the table scraps and breadcrumbs
That their masters are willing
To let fall into their mouths
On this day of death
The executioner
Reads the crimes for the
Pious heart about to have
Its red river shared with the world
Because the most sacred of moral codes
Was broken
For the sake of a kiss
Delivered upon the gently bent head
Of a noblewoman
But as all in the land know
Nobility is not meant
To fraternize
With animals

Swallow Hard
Skipping a stone
Across the reflective waters
Of a peaceful pond
Her eyes set upon
A light figure
Surrounded by darkened clouds
Looking gently down
Trying to determine
If the man looking back
Is the man that should be there
Inhabiting the skin
She tries to meet his gaze
Attempting to get his attention
By skipping stones further across the water
Closer to his morose mind
No longer able to
Find pleasure in being alive
Because his feet only know how to move forward
His head, now a constant ache
Unwilling to free him
From the memories that bind him
To regret and sadness
For not standing by his beloved
Because his heartache grew so large
It turned his heart against her
And against himself
Saddened
She takes her last stone
And skips it, unnoticed
Being left with the unspoken understanding
That she must either go to him
Or accept that he is merely a man
Standing across the same pond as she,
Troubled, retracing his past
Hoping to discover
The first hurt and first wrong done unto him
So that he can resurrect the memory
And bury it deeper
Than it is now
Allowing him to swallow hard one last moment
Then move forward
To where the new day waits

Silently Slipping
Falling, silently
Unnoticed
Into the well-deserved darkness
That calls day after day
An unavoidable void
Making its way up the body
Like the vines of a tree
From the bottom of the feet
To the blue of the veins
Reminding the heart
Who the real master is
Each tick-tocking throb of life
Pumps blood
To the temples of the underwritten
Composer of each and every moment
Conducting as a maestro
Every image and interpretation
The body sees and reacts to
Yet forced to accept
The consciousness of its own consciousness
Unable to merely exist
Without contemplating what it means
To be a brain within a skull
Capable of performing any action
Even producing hallucinations
And guiltless deceit
The vines of the void
Gently wrap around his ring finger
Treating delicately
His most precious memories
Of a now barren, long forgotten
Dream that had bloomed into reality
From the chemical productions of his brain
That sought to make its other half happy
The half that was temporarily made unaware
That everything thought and felt
Was produced by endorphins
And nerves that could be
Interpreted as being deceitful
If emotions
And the soulful part of the body
Got too involved

Dreamscape Kisses
Lips that are softer
Than they were from memory
Press against the desperateness
Still residing
In the heart of one
Seeking to move forward
While never turning his head
In the proper direction
Seeing just how small
The object of his affection can grow
Before it disappears
Completely from his sight
Prior to the ending
That comes now every time
The two meet eyes and share bodies
He offers her
A dreamscape kiss
A temporary lapse
Back into the past
Where the two lay
Unmoved and uncaring
As to if the sky would fall
And the world would crumble
Fire falling like pretty lights from the heavens
A small show is put on
To mark the beginning of a life
For two soul mates
United in flesh
Holding onto each other without fear
And without interruption
Of their conversation
He reaches for her again now
To solidify
What seems to turn to water
And slip from his hands
Again and again
And she, though changed from their lives together
Allows him to kiss her again
Bringing to life
One final dream to share
As the sky falls

II. JUPITER CRASH

Drifting
Out by the open water
That seems endless
With its peaceful waves
Moving out farther than the eye can see
Even when strained
There floats on the surface
A piece of driftwood
Separated from its other broken pieces
Knowing now
In the middle of the ocean
The true meaning of loneliness
Unfeeling
Cold waves
Crash against it
And as human eyes
Temporarily spot it
Admiring it for its ability
To float unharmed
Among the ice cold water
The driftwood whimpers
Trying to stretch out its remaining branches
In the direction of others
So that possibly it will be retrieved
Out of curiosity
Or the male desire
To claim a piece of wood for chopping and burning
The wood offers itself
To be taken and crucified
As if it were an earthly messiah
Yet the water
Is too cold for human skin
To venture out with its curiosity
And male idiocy
To try to claim
The wood drifting
Unheard in its silent tongue
Due to humans limitations
From the five senses
That are able to hear and see
Into the distance
Until their eyes water
And sound fades away to quietude

The Oceanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pull
The water stirs
Around bodies rendered lifeless
Dead weight
Settling in like morbid stone
At the bottom of the ocean
Where above-water eyes
No longer have to look upon
Their once-living,
Once-treasured friends
Who now lay
Buried beneath the sands
With no desire to be rediscovered
As their eyes only flap open to give them sight
When the water current pushes their lids up
A small reminder that at one time
When their bodies were full of life
And not discarded waste
To be disposed of
In a place where they could sink
And rot
Without the smell of their flesh
Bothering the noses of their beloveds
An earlier time
When their friends were full of care
And would have spoken to them with deceptive concern
Saying that life is full of dangers
But it should never stop you
From doing what you want to do
And in these moments prior to death
The soon-to-be-stone friend
Would have been able to take a breath
Above or below the water
Still conscious and able to resist physically
The oceanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pull
And the inevitable end
That comes once one hits
The sandy bottom
Where bodies collect like memories
Never to be thought of again
Rotting from the deceitful nature
Of those who only halfheartedly
Call themselves
A friend

Gravity
The sky is stuck
Somewhere between purple and black
As a woman’s hair is highlighted
By the glowing stars
Looking in admiration
At the tangible dream in front of them
The material makings of the body
Curves that speak through body language
Welcoming those of the same form
To partake in the comforts of the flesh
Simple beings
Bound by the inescapable ties to humanity
Gravity and the angled, turning world
Remaining the only place
To truly call home
Her partner
An unwavering romantic
Finds security in the idea
That the heart is more than an organ
It is the center of all human emotions
The maker-and-breaker
Of life’s purposefulness
For without love…
She speaks to him as she is
Free-floating and not yet ready
To swear herself to one and one alone
Seeing that there are many flames
Able to light her fire
She requests that he come beside her
Putting his words and dreams to rest
For the time being
Allowing each other to merely enjoy
The knowing that the two can unite
As they lay amongst the stars
Looking down upon
The familiarity of home
Watching as gravity and time
Pass them by
As if the flames they lit when together
Could leave them untouched
By the clock’s delivery
Of a new day and night

A Flame
As he enters her
She feels it rise up
From the depths of her inner longings
Red and yellow
Burning like the sun
The forcefulness
Of the natural world
Pressing against her
Treating roughly
Her soft skin
Reminding her
In an undesired yet irresistible whisper
That all pleasure comes with pain
And her body cannot argue
As the flame burns brighter
Flooding her with the fire
The sick-sweet sensations
That must be godly
Otherwise they would not feel as good as they do
And the mind would be able
To keep its thoughts
Rather than having them
Fall away
Replaced by the sweat-stained desires of the skin
Making the unthinkable
Now desirable
And necessary
For the body to experience
The discovery of the flame
That undresses mystery
Revealing its bloom
And color
As the body meets with extremes
That used to only take form
As the body slept and projected images
That left the other half
Frightened as it awoke
Knowing that what it had experienced in the dream
Was a fleshly nightmare
As there are limitations
For a flameless body
That has yet to embrace
And uncover its own fleshly
Mystery

Wound Down
The crystallized memories
Once horded by their possessor
Are now shattered by the same hands
Previously unwilling to conceive
Of letting go of times
So precious
Yet growing upset
And bitter
When the present
Could not remain to be like the past
As moments are not meant to be captured
Only experienced
Falling away into the black abyss of forgetting
Where the mind tries to explain
To its poor self-deceived heart
That sweetened memories arise from lust
The body playing games with its inhabitant
While it is full of the intoxicating feelings
Of a new body designed
Solely for its pleasure
Pressing against it
And pressing into it
The sweet, sticky memories
Soon to haunt the body
As it shakes at night
In its cries
Without its mate
The withdrawals from dream-like memories
And cruel realities
Hitting hard
The body that is forced to wind down
And accept
That it was only real
For the hours that the eyes were closed
Reality having nothing grandiose
To offer to anyone
For those unlocked from the arms of lust
Are forced to look upon the world
For what it truly is
And those who are still gaga for another
Awaken each day with their soon-to-die dream
Making sure to pull the wool
Tightly over their eyes

Semi-permanent
He would become a pair of sunglasses
Left on the table
Never to be worn again
The trash that didn’t get taken out on time
Because the morning hours
Always came too early
The story left untold around the campfire
Since all others
Crumbled from the fear
Of telling a story that would lead to embarrassment
The climax never arriving
For the ears of the listeners or the mouth of the teller
He would be remembered as
The hand that would take a child’s
And lead him through the moonlit night
To show him how the water reflects
And the entire world
Can be seen sitting atop the water
And the wondrous proof
Of what it meant
To give your word
And stick by it
Only allowing for death
When he came bidding
To break vows
That were as permanent
As the body’s flesh
And the heart’s beat
The same heart
That would weep for its master’s passing
As he crossed over
Hand-in-hand
With the black-hooded child
Who never had a father
Or a friend
To show him
How the world can be seen in the water
And how the body’s frame
And breath of life
Is as semi-permanent
As the people able to recall
From a story told around a campfire
The memory of their father

Peace
A thousand blades of grass
Hold him up from the ground
As he allows the heat of the sun
To burn away
The old skin
Of an previous life
Causing the eventual peeling away
Of scarred flesh
Flesh containing the memories
Of a life sought after
That now requires its erasure from the mind
He does his best to embrace the pains of his current life
The limbs that never cease to ache
Hoping that some day soon
He will awaken
Wide-eyed
Seeing like a child again
Everything new
Every image intriguing
Yet indiscernible
In its meaning
Requiring that the body awaken from its slumber
Pushing back the physical pains
So that it may experience
Learning what it means
To be reborn like the phoenix
Able to look upon past broken-heartedness
As if it were a memory
Formed from falling asleep
While reading Blakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Songs of Innocence and Experience
Where a boy laying in the grass
In the world of consciousness
Would awaken as a man
With a changed perspective
Discovering a sense of peace
Where heartache had laid
And made home
In his aching limbs
That had bled for months and months
As he looked in the mirror
And accepted the consequences
Of surrendering dreams
To reality

Jupiter Crash
The rays of the sun
Are disheartened
By the empty space
They once knew
To be Jupiter
Her orbit
And atmosphere
The planet
Having been sucked quickly
Into a black void
The event happening so fast
That fellow planets and stars
Were unable to a lend assistance
To a stellar sister
As she passed into the deep
Too shocked and scared
To try to scream from her
Planetary lungs
A word or phrase
To be remembered by
Or offer as closure
For those who were there to see
Their highly-thought-of-sibling
On her deathbed
As she accepted the inevitability of fate
The sad, bitter, twisted truth
That you can only have so much control
Until the omnipotent
Waves its hands
And brings the titans
To come and collect
The figure and soul
Soon to be judged
As it finds itself now
On the other side
Understanding that the void
Was just the next passage
To a place unknown
Somewhere it was destined to go
Since time is always allotted
And a schedule is always kept
With only the slightest chance
For one to have an extension
Or a second go-around

Open Ended
The darkened need
For an answer
To a question
That lays awake
Plaguing the mind
For the should-be-hours of sleep
Capable of restoring the heart
Giving new breath
To the lungs that feed the body life
As it moves toward its next destination
Forgiveness and retrospect
Both stand in the distance
Hoping to meet the eyes
Of a fallen, misguided, manipulated child
Who has been made to fear his own reflection
Unable to ask an open-ended question
Well-aware of the answer already given by the other
Whose answer is the determining factor
In shaping his emotional and mental outcome
The body able to carry on
No matter what takes place
The vessel, though tattered and attacking itself
Now a practitioner of self-hate
Feels there is nothing to question
All things are as they should be
And all things are a result of cause and effect
Each move put into motion
Having now led to these bitter black awakenings
Where dependency is the only form of life
Because being alone without an answer
Or a comfort for the mind
Has the child forever falling
Looking into the darkness
And calling for its mother or father
Repeating again and again
His apologies for not believing
That there were monsters in the darkness
And that anyone can lose themselves
From asking the wrong question
Or coming to a realization
That permanently alters existence
And dirties the air
That allow for the lungs
To provide life

A Feeling of Regret
In a moment of reflection
His life becomes simplified
Every action comparable
To choosing the right piece of candy at the candy store
Yes, there will always be the same candies
And even new candies, in the day to come
But when you are young
And given money rarely
It is essential
To choose the right candy
On the right day
Otherwise, the money has been wasted
And the child continues on
Disappointed by his choice
His rushed decision
And inability to take it back.
He is left with a sweet candy in his mouth
That tastes sour from his lack of desire
For the sweetness of the purchase
As a child, he is already aware
Of the labor and the pain
That made the coin and the candy possible
Now experiencing a deeper feeling than just disappointed
He feels he is a traitor
Having turned against the angels
Who have done nothing
But traded their time and effort
For his happiness and indulgence.
Knowing now that he was not, and is not
As wise as his providers
He deserves rather
To be like the animal that lays
Under the table
Unworthy of any affection from his beloveds
Yet hoping to be fed
Any uneaten or not properly cooked food
Avoiding all choices and decisions
That approach him
Because he is unfit
And unwilling to experience again
The taste of a soured, sweet candy
And a haunting feeling
Of disappointment, misery
And regret

The Child
Yearning for a time
That is not due for another twenty years
The child hides between the legs of its parents
Looking upward, dreamily
Thinking of the physical changes
His body will undergo
Waking one day,
No longer small
But as the tree
That welcomes him home
Each day,
Standing in the sunlight
Fruitless, but only because
The worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s creator
Did not design the tree
To bear more than it was meant to
Yet, the tree in time
Had branches that grew
Turning and twisting
Into the most beauteous
Of wooden structures
The boy could not help but think
How he was like the tree
Soon to turn and twist
Growing upward, straight
As mother always corrected his posture
Joking him that he did want to be a hunchback like Quasimodo
When he was older
Forced to live a life
In a bell tower
As it was the only place
The deformed creature
Could seek sanctuary
He straightens his back
After having this thought
Half-listening to the chatter of adults
Dreaming blissfully
Of the day that he will be grown
And his body
Will find itself
Eye level with the heavens
Taller than the twisted trees of childhood

Stardust
Frighteningly
The newborn star
Sees its father
Burn into oblivion
Leaving a small trail of dust
Soon disappearing
Into the night that now grows a little darker
From a light gone out
Yet still welcoming all
Just the same
To enter into the final chapter of living
Where no further action is necessary
Only the acceptance of a simple unity
Between the something that is soon to become
Untraceable and unknowable
The master of ending and final breaths has
No demands
And desires no promises
Or expectations that usually come along
With the innate selfishness and greed
Of every living thing
It merely holds its hand out
Beckoning softly to those
Who can no longer maintain themselves
In the living world
Of sight and sound
Explaining as a siren does
That it is time
To join with the sightless and soundless
Where existence is primordial
Not complex nor bound up
In filial expectations
Or relationships
Necessary to ease the mind
Always in search of what it feels
It does not have.
The acceptance of the final chapter
Melts away the desire
For connection with others
Finding stability
In the solitude of oneness
That comes with the ancient sleep
Of stardust and the acceptance
That all stories have an end

Wonder
The child scratches
Onto soft parchment
That yields no judgment
A thoughtful question to a friend
Why is it that we look to the unknown
In fear, rather than in wonderment
Of what we don’t understand?
We build walls of prejudice
As high as skyscrapers
So that there is absolutely no chance
For intruders to scale the wall
And wander into our minds
Even our subconscious thoughts
We work against
Every should-be-attempt
At making ourselves more open
Buying more heavy duty locks
“Because the primitive beasts
Have developed new weapons
And when their physical strength fails them
They use mimicry
Manipulating civility
So they can try to sit among our tables
Conversing with us
On the struggles of the day
The lost livestock and blistering sun
When they, in fact,
Are the very beasts
Striking down
Our well-made investments
That allow us to further ourselves
And fill our pockets
So that we can live
Earnestly and honestly
Among the challenges
Of those unable to rise above
Their social limitations
And embrace the true beauty
Of civility”
The boy stops writing
And wonders when he will become
More than a beast among humans

Locked in Prayer
Hands are interlocked
Tightened around each other
In desperation
Speaking in a spiritual tongue
To a creator who is always above,
Unseen, the same way
Love is unseen
Yet still takes the hand
And heart of the bitterest soul
Unexpectedly leading the scrooge
Toward a light never beheld
Since his eyes were always lowered
Looking at the ground
Trying to determine how many commonalities were shared between
His heart and a piece of coal
But the scroogeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s being demoted
To a follower
Permits the optimistic
Well-intentioned leader
Who bears a striking resemblance
To a small man with bow and arrow
Takes our once-ice-cold friend
And brings him to the gates of heaven
Where the creator is willing
To put down his hands of creation
To stop and wave
At one of his children
Noting to himself
How he really should spend more time
With the troubled ones
Who grower darker and dress in all black
Not because they like the color
Or because greed as stolen their light
But because love has been absent from their hearts too long
The laughter and smile of a child
Seeming a cruel beauty
To bestow upon their ears and hearts
As they have no one
To share the sidewalk with and converse pleasantly about the day with
Left alone like terrified children
With their hands in prayer
Repeating a mantra
Praying god will heal their lonesome hearts

Rude Awakening
His tattered coat
Sleeping as peacefully as its owner
Is wakened by a prodding stick
Used by the authorities
To push further into the darkness
Those who have no place of residence
The manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes
Become alive and look
Surprisingly upward
Toward the elegant figure
That desires, partly because it is his job
And partly, because of his superiority
To motion to the man
That his time of free rest
Has come to an end
And that the night waits for him
For the journey he must take
To become unseen like a specter
His feet required to never stop moving
Until morning and day return
And he is permitted
To reform himself in flesh and poverty
Still undesired to be seen
But also a necessary evil
To be kept and used as an example
As why education and civility
Are essential to human life
Because without it
One is required
To live in and with nature
Forced to build illegal fires to stay warm
And never again have a good nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rest
Since there is always a man on patrol
Keeping the city clean and safe
From vagabonds
Those who would rather live
With the smell of alcohol
Forever on their lips
And their breath
More concerned with having another drink
Than trying to re-climb
The social ladder
That could be their redemption

The Window
A small figure
Holds his hands behind his back
Looking outside a window
Onto the long green hills of land
Falling under his fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name
Nature having been tamed
And put into the possession
Of one able to wheel-and-deal
Like the best of them
Not conniving or deceitful
Simply a man who knew the business
And desired to leave his amassed amounts of riches
To the child who would
Become the spitting image
Of the man he was
Having a small piece of his soul
Forever intermingled with the very blood
Linking the two of them
As more than just relatives
As the younger was a reproduction of the original
Bearing the same name with a suffix
Denoting the slightest difference between the two
Mainly the year of birth
And the more prominent appearance of youth
As the Jr. did not have the same sweat and blood
Held within the wrinkles of the skin
As his father had
From the constant work required
To build the very structure
Supporting his sonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s feet
Holding him above the ground
Offering him a view
Of his great estates
A physical proof and glimpse of his fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worth
Through the window of life
The blood on his hands
Leading him to a place greater
Than just another part of the field
Where his labor would continue
With little profit
And even lesser hope
For an achievable greatness
That could be left behind
To his son, his secondary flesh and bone

Sun-dried Reflections
Though he is a man now
The dirt beneath his fingernails
Still reminds him of his childhood
When his father would finally let go
Of his bourgeoisie nature
And fear of dirtiness
So that he could embrace
The same freedom as his son
Enjoying lying and rolling
In the freshly turned earth
As if it were a greater treasure
Than the coins
That lay strewn across the vault
Steel proven to never rust
And age
The way that the bodies
Of these two men would
Feeling the toll
Of the clockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ticking
Wear on their skin
Bidding each of them
At his destined time
To make peace with his actions
And to seek redemption
While not forgetting to designate
The next heir to the throne
To stand and look over his kingdom
Seeing the sun-dried reflections
Of those who came before him
In the perfectly flattened dirt
Where each would play with his father
Teaching an elder
The art of remembering what it means
To let go and fall into a world of freedom
Diminishing the darkening structures
That one human will place on another
In order to reconfigure the brain
So it always thinks in terms of hierarchy
And puts to rest its days
Of finding pleasure in playing
And dreaming
Of all the lives and worlds
The mind could make for itself

III. THE FIELDS OF SORROW

To Rid The Disease
Half-awake eyes
Peer into the darkness
Hearing the alarm
Chiming deep in the soul of the distraught
As his mind and body are still not one with each other
His precious organ still drowning
Unable to rationalize its own existence
Without the one it has tied itself to
Loveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s becoming the very disease
The body must rid itself of
In order to waken in the night
Without sweat upon the brow
From a dreadful dream
Of a life past unable to be returned to the present
Where angels and demons
Watch silently, taking bets
As to who will prevail in the battle
Between rationality and the unfading desire
Arising still, even after the flame has flickered
Forever diminished by the actions
Taken by oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s other half
In the name of love
His body
Before reentering into a state of rest
Peers out onto the ocean waves
Where he can still hear her voice
Speaking to him
Always coming in the night
Light a disembodied siren
Trying to coo him into returning
To the dark coldness of the sea
Where she promises to make him king
As she rules as queen
Believing the same lies
Ingrained into her from a false superiority
The wind awakens him from his half-sleep
Now realizing that he has been standing against a rail
Victimized again by the disease
He cannot rid himself of
His conscious mind never sure
Whether he is awake
Or dreaming

Dramatic Happening
He struggles to find
The stable ground
Between the dramatic happenings
Of the peaceful life
He once lived
Each breath in and breath out
Measurable in only
A smile or a laugh
Now, haunted by the ending results
Of letting oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest desires
Come too close and turning the flame of the heart
Into a forest fire
Showing the innocent and the pure-hearted
The destructiveness of love
Passionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s acting as the main ingredient
For the madness that makes the body
Strike out in a rage
No longer able to maintain its civility
As thoughts of loss transform the already unstable
Into a monster that no human was meant to be
The skin growing harder and colder
Than that of the nymph
That used to so delicately
Lay beside her mate
Telling him that of all things she was thankful for
It was the softness of the two of them
And the strong soulful connection
Existing between their hearts
Roses wilt
He thinks
Re-searching his mind
As if it held the answer
Or deducible reasoning
For why sweetness turns sour
And the tales that parents tell their children
Of the sweetness of meeting that one person
Are nothing but bitter lies
Used to cover up
The dramatic happenings
Sworn to be forgotten and forgiven
For the sake of the family
That would come in time
From passion-driven loins

A Rising Calm
Like a vessel aimlessly floating
With no set direction
Or ending point
The body heads toward a rocky cove
The water treating the flesh gently
As if it knew it was the only one who could
Enact a proper funeral procession
For the recently dead
Who though, having every appearance
Of being fully dead
Was still able to feel the water
As it moved against its body
Desensitized to the coldness
And the physical pains caused by the rocks
As his bodied was motioned into the proper position
For the only spiritual rites of passage
Known by the water goddess
Who was able to feel from the bleak
White, pale, battered skin
That this body was worthy
Of a sacred respect given to those
Who were meant for greatness
But died prematurely, surprising fate
And the predestined course of action
Each human is unaware that he or she takes
Because the thought of freewill
Was such a intoxicating idea
The creator of the world
Allowed for humans to have their delusions
If it were to produce for them
A rising calm
Leaving his subjects
Less needy
Seeking fewer answers
While on their knees in prayer
Becoming more like intelligent creatures
Believing they were free to wander
Though in the end
Each found themselves
As dead weight
Floating in the river
Discovering death to be
The most sacred rite of passage
That follows after their final freewilled decision

The Field of Sorrow
Memories grow like flowers
In a field of sorrow
Where dirtied blistered hands
Reach down into the thorny soil
Hoping to discover beneath the dirt
A memory growing as a white light
Able to begin diminishing
The darkness that rules supreme
In this plantation of the conscious mind
Where the master has become
A slave forced to return again and again
To the unkempt un-kept garden
That has turned against itself
Developing an outer wall that protects itself
From ever thinking or experiencing
A thought outside the darkness
The man plucks some of the memories
In order to reflect on them
And try to turn them to light
Yet he is left hopelessly
Looking into events
That could have only been constructed
By the devilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hands
Showing that love
Is fated and controlled
By minions stronger than the heart
As the mind is wired
To set limitations for what it can take
And what it can forgive
Allowing the past to serve as a reminder
For what the present and future can never be again
Preservation rooted in
Every forward action
Taken by the mind
That can speak of selflessness
But cannot withstand
Too many strikes to the ego
Self-dissolution leading to
A field of sorrow
Where only bittersweet memories grow
Of a time that once was
And can never be
Again

Windswept
The gust of wind hits hard
Knocking to the ground
The finely dressed figure
Seeking to have his aristocratic appearance
Show his worth
He, unlike others, who would continue on with their day
Unconcerned of how the wind has changed them,
Is forced to assess the damage done
Seeing the scuff upon his shoe
And the wrinkle now visible at the very bottom of his pant leg
His eyes naturally look at the signs above him
Searching for some type of store
Able to remedy his ailments
For the thought of trying to tend to himself
Is so appalling and middle class
It frightens him to think
That as his current struggle goes unnoticed
The people continuing to pass by him
Daily waken and are forced to have to tend to others
And themselves
Never knowing the true beauty
Of what it means
To not have to work
Because the labor has already been performed
By anotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand
At another time
The fingers of the aristocrat
Only tasked to learn proper etiquette and superiority
To be used among his own peoples
As it is their custom
To allow for elegant actions
To substitute for meaningless words and chatter
For it is the lower classes
And the beasts
Who desire to talk amongst themselves
Laughing and smiling
At the simplistic beauty of humorousness
Attributable to one that has been windswept
While walking along the sidewalk
Hoping that the sheer fashion of clothes
Is able to maintain
His place in the world
The well-defined separating lines between man and beast

To Meet The Maker
The blood pumping
Like a torrent through his veins
Seeks in its hyped-up state of
Passing through the body
To achieve a metaphysical level of consciousness
Where the bodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s form and identity
Can transcend upward
To meet the maker
Who sits patiently wondering
When one will discover
To follow the Christ will lead you to a secondhand salvation
But to follow the Buddha
Unlocks the troublesome, ever-changing
Puzzle pieces of the mind
That often lead back to the same unwanted feelings
Of faithlessness, unable to fully trust
A man never met, only heard of in stories
Water turned to wine
Doing nothing to provide
Comfort to the body that the tingling feeling
That sometimes flows like blood
Is in fact the soul, the egg to hatch
And release from it, the individual
Unharmed, fully mystic
Ready to pursue the second life
Where the entirety of the world and beyond
Is opened to exploration
That leaves the earth unturned
And unaffected
By humanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s curiosity and desire to know
What the Christ and the creator
Said needed to be accepted
Rather than questioned
Discovering a greater transcendence
The knowing that, in time
All questions are answered
Yet leave the questioned
Unharmed, as it is the physical body
Able to do damage
And hurt those around it
Always aware that it can attain
A secondhand salvation
From a man they heard about
In stories from the good book

Quiet Night
Swaying trees
Sing the softest of songs
For the sleep-deprived
Well-intentioned
Resting their eyes
For the first time since the fever broke
And they were able to rise
Without the misery of the night
Being filled with dreadful, loud thoughts
Of wrongdoings and broken promises
Always leading to the second-guessing
Of eventual fate
But knowing that any further attempt
Will still lead the healing heart
Toward hateful words
And cuts deep enough
To scar and never heal
So rather than rise
And attempt the impossible
The heart is given a chance for hope and recovery
As the quiet night continues to sing its song
Gently picking up the body
And rocking it
As it had once been rocked as a babe
Unaware and unthinking of
The travesties to come
From fate, freewill, and choice
For the romantic will always be battered
And almost dead
Before he tries to turn his back
On a sworn oath
Even when the dying thing
Continues to drain him
Seeming unfeeling as it does so
Uncaring as to how low he falls
As his self-worth dwindles
And he is forced to become a child again
Yet a newborn without ignorance
Aware now, of the cruelties accompanying
Giving oneself to another
And trusting in them
Believing their words to be true
When, in fact, all words are
Just meaningless sounds made by the mouth

Haunting(s)
A torn shirt lies half off of a dresser
Where its wearer will never return
A bottle of cologne, still potent
Sits in the far left corner
Never to be further emptied of its content
Or picked up and held
By the gentle hands of its owner
The blinds remain half turned
So that light can enter
But the contents of the room
Remain un-discernible
To outside eyes looking in
Who, if unknown, to the inhabitants
Passes by wearing a smile
Where smiles are no longer kept
By the hearts made bitter from loss
Letters written by the once alive
Are discovered in a dusty tin
Intended to be delivered
To each member of the family
For the upcoming Christmas
A time when love could be unveiled
No longer kept a secret
Behind the closed, silent mouth
Of one misunderstood
For his choice of attire and music
His family preferring judgment
Prior to any attempt at understanding
Now each day promotes thoughtful awakenings
Realizations and discoveries
Arising from the darkened hallways
And haunting(s)
That come along with the loss of a child
Knowing the saddest day to not be the day that he died
But his day of birth
When a special scent was to be purchased in honor of him
And remain kept, unsprayed by those still living
As if the potency of the cologne
Could capture him perfectly
And make it seem as if
He had never left

Unmentioned
Writing a letter to its memory
The mind tries to move forward
From the bittersweet recollection
Of a time not yet far enough into the past
To be completely forgotten
Telling the memory
That if the heart had not been so filled with cowardice
There may have been a chance
For the two of them to have fallen
Into the arms of a woman
Who would have cared for them
Even if it be only for a night
Underneath the stars
They could have exchanged more than numbers
And maybe she would have called
If he had used more persuasion
Touching her skin in desperate need
Of its softness and its warmth
And then after sharing a kiss
And conversation so deep
Even time would have tried to stop its forward motion
So it could catch a few words
Of the two speaking in voices
Sweeter than songbirds
All along taking in the pleasure
Of having discovered another
To be close to
And form a bond with
The mind induces itself
To fantasize these things
To try to explain to the heart
The things that could have been
If time had not passed so quickly
And a drunken body
Had not gotten caught up
In conversation
With every pair of eyes it made contact with
Knowing that because
Actions went undone
And words went unmentioned
The mind is left to wonder
The would-have-been-moments
Formed from a greater attempt

Prior
The writer with his words
And ability to bring into being
Those names that were left unconsidered
And unthought-of until the day
He brought our attention to their importance
Secretly knows that every character
Has cried a thousand tears
And laid with an arm draped over a lover
Prior to their creation
In the sense of words and narrative
The characters
Before being led by plot
In a set direction
Favorable to the story
And the teller of the tale
Had unplanned days
Of running desperately to the train station
Calling out again and again
For his beloved to answer
Hoping that by this act
This display of what she means to him
She might stay
Might depart from the train
And realize the foolishness
In trying to be without each other
For their two hearts
Were bound deeper than love
Yet as he approaches the station
He sees that she is not on the train
But rather in the arms of another
Her every action having seemed to be premeditated
She did not want to leave him
She wanted to break him
The clouds offering a perfect grayness
To the scene playing out before his eyes
Love was just a mere melody
That softly sings the truth to its listener
Prior to one loving them
They had loved another
Morbidly embracing
What the heart is apt to do

Time Passing
An aging man
Fighting to keep his mortality
Removes the hands of a clock
Bending the metal
Making it unable to progress forward
Creating a standstill moment
The he can live in
Forever, no longer withering
Like a spoiled fruit
Left out in the sun to long
And subject to the weather
The hard beating rain
And the unforgiving sun
He tries to convince himself
That soon a reversal will take place
A reclaiming of youth
His skin will no longer be coarse
But be soft again
The way it was when he began
His first search for a lover
In an ocean of fleshly bodies
Each seeking his or her other half
A compliment to their desires
Whatever they may be
He tells himself that it will all be different
With time out of the picture he can patiently weigh his choices
Making a decision not in haste
So that he can walk , hand-in-hand
Through the rest of eternity
With a woman who will not turn away from him
As the passing of days are reduced to the simple value
Of a sunrise and sunset shared between a man and a woman
A man who is amazed by the results
Of what can be achieved by removing the hands of time
And a woman who is unaware
Of how much time has passed
As she only notices
The lost softness of her skin
Wishing that she could be as her mate was
Unchanging, forever young
No longer affected by
The passage of time

Moving Images
The realness of the moment fades
And she can see it all
Being acted out on the big screen
Moving images with accompanying sounds
The words spoken in desperateness
Becoming more comical to her
From her new view of the situation
She kicks back in the red velvet theater chair
Feeling the comfort of the seat
As she watches a relationship fall to pieces before her eyes
Thinking over and over again
I’m so glad that’s not me
Observing the way the girl’s eyes on the screen fall
Low to the ground
And after the man makes his exit
The water falls from her eyes
Small puddles forming all around her
Her makeup, running down her face
So dramatically, the way it always does
In these types of movies
And a part of her knows
If she rises now, then she can still stop him
Before he is gone completely…
And then the lights come back on
There is no theater
No comfortable velvet chair
Only a brokenhearted girl
Sitting and crying
No signal for “the end”
No “Fin” to add classiness to the happening
There is only the closed door
And the fresh white walls
Of the room surrounding her
Offer her every symbol of purity
Though she knows she is the image of dirtiness
The irremovable stain on the carpet
A child who has cried
Too many tears
To be a child anymore
Now rendered
An unwanted
Heap of lost hopes
And unreachable dream

Ill-thought
The ring around his finger
Burns his skin with the regret and solitude
He is surrounded by
Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s presence slipping in through the small cracks of the blinds
Offering a distasteful warmth
When his heart is icy
As he sits in a state of contemplating
Wondering the point to keeping vows
When it is only the other who changes
Refusing to stand up for her spouse
Showing that an ill-thought
Is often an unchangeable truth
An un-kept promise brought to light
As soon as the gods chose to have
The wool removed from the otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes
So that he could see the actuality
The death of the dream
The other half of him
Who would rather compromise his well-being
Instead of trying to heal
A shivering heart
Emptily promising to do all things possible
To maintain the bond between the two
As the rings comes off
And is melted down into forgotten memories
The man only sometimes still looks up at the stars
Wishing to return to a moment in time
Prior to the spoiling of precious love
A death of beauty
Brought on by an ill-thought
Transformed into a bitter realization
Night and day becoming a continuous
Unsteady, unreleased breath
The body trembling from its inability
To release all it has had to hold on to
For the sake of the other
Being granted the ability to live
A delusional fantasy
Instead of accepting and trying to change
The sad truth of a reality
Able to crumble to dust
A love bound by two rings
And heartfelt vows

Subjugated
Beneath the mire of yesteryears
And a people forgotten
A dirtied breed of human
Associated with wily beasts of night
Speak in foreign tongue
Of the day to soon be reclaimed
The sense of subjugation being diminished
As the light of day is reintroduced to eyes
Grown too used to the darkness
Parents and children alike
Feeling their eyes look up past the overhanging dirt ceilings
That keep them as cave-dwellers
Dreaming of a brighter future
Where all negativity and doubt
Is replaced by the mantra of the heart
Onward! Onward! Onward!
The vital organ screams
Moving the feet forward
Out from a dirt-filled life
And onto the paved roads of progress
Where night and day are measured with instruments
And man and woman alike
Can eat without having to track
Or make sure the hand is kept steady when the shot is taken
Rather the animals have already been slaughtered
And the warmth of the sun
Has been captured and trained
To keep itself at the temperature
That is to its masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s liking
It is this day of great happenings
Marked by the onward march of a forgotten people
That cause those above ground
To come face to face
With ancestors they believed to be
Mere myths
Improvable stories
Told by forefathers
Out of fancy
For realities they would rather
Turn to fiction
To ease their troubled minds

Ghost Reveries
Fallen into the final prayer
His mind pleas with desperation
For a full return
Reverting back
To the first day of life
And the bliss
Of being subjectless
Unable to discern
Oneself from all surrounding things
The dividing lines of individuality
Yet to be drawn
The only foundational marker
Is a collection of sounds
Unable to be interpreted at their signified value
Allowing the newborn
To remain deaf and dumb
To those who call his name
The distance from sound
Is a heartfelt blessing
To the mind seeking ignorance
Preferring it to the nonsensical
Preconceived ideals of human existence
For in silence, form overtakes
All transparent values
That words will put upon a thing
For the sake of manipulation
Taking hold of the object unable to articulate
Speaking in its turn
Claiming to know its desires
As if the two shared the same thought process
And were of the same blood and soul
The righteous action taken by a responsible
Older and wiser brother
Who explained for his deaf sibling
That what he sought was to be known
And defined by those who knew him
All other wishes falling by the wayside
For who could ever find peace
In soundlessness
When each person needs to hear an explanation
For what their eyes have come to behold
Looking outside of themselves
To understand the forms of others

IV. THE PRAYER SEEKER

The Prayer Seeker
He presses his hands
Into the dead soot
From a ritualistic burning
One moving him farther toward
The divine light
Of a half-hearted god
Recollecting from memories
Chained to the walls of his heart
The tears return to his eyes
Redemption feeling like a mock joke
Played on him
By the master of all
A mute, unseen puppeteer
Seeking prayers and worship
From the mouths of those he created
Desiring to hear another
Speak his name and of his greatness
Blissfully unaware that the thoughts
Forming so genuinely from the heart
Are merely preinstalled and preprogrammed
A dishonest manipulation
Of the human mind
Creating children not out of love
And hope for their future
But only that the word fatherhood
Could come into being
Allowing the man pulling the strings
To find greater meaning in himself
By creating a false sense of importance
The hymns being sung
Nothing more than a physical manifestation
Of his superego and id
Each child of god looking upward to the sky
Praying that those below
Will one day be worthy
To meet eye-to-eye
With their creator
The birth-giver
Whose ancient wisdom and compassion
Created the heavens and the earth
So that all things could come to be
And come to pass
According to plan

Deliverance
Upon the longest branch
Of the tallest tree
During the darkest hour of night
There sits a white dove
A metaphorical image of deliverance
Its wings drawn in
Relaxed and calm, it seeks not to travel any farther
Taking in the beauty of peacefulness
Flooding its eyes
As humans rest, though their world still breathes
And still functions the same without them
The necessity of human life
Merely propaganda produced by minds
Unwilling to accept their place in the world
The dove has watched a thousand nights
Just in this manner
Made calm by the fact that there is no dependency on humans
The earth preferring to open itself up
To try to swallow them whole
Or having the waters rise
And the winds rage
So that those deemed so very overly-important
Will become deadweight
Left to eternal slumber
Or a proper meal for hungry fish
Humansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; gaining a use in the world
After the slightest alteration
To the food chain
The children of god being moved right below
The bottom feeder
Where they are able to be
Returned to their proper position
The earth taking extra precaution
Now fully aware of the consequences
Of what happens
When the lowest of the low
Temporarily maintain a place of greatness
Achieved from a surprise attack,
False promises
And power hungry hearts
Chanting that ever-so-common phrase
Kill or be killed
Eat or be eaten

Sworn
The actions of life
Come to be like fallen leaves
Slowly dancing through the air
Landing where the wind leads them
From time to time
The ownerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes
Will stand from a distance
Behind the window of a house
Looking out upon the scattered actions of his life
Wondering if the wind had taken him
And led him further in the direction
Of the endless waters
Would he have drowned
Or would the coldness of the water
Awoken him from the deep sleep of his mind
Causing him to look more closely
At the warmth that surrounds him
Willing to embrace him and cling to him
So that he need never sleep or walk alone
Moving through life gently
As if the stream and the babbling brook
Were the controllers of his pace
Having it so that his heart never sped nor trembled
His footfall angelic in a way that made it seem
He had known all along that his heart would find peace in the water
But fateful winds had to lead him there
Staring outside the window
He dreams of the day that the winds will come
And the sticky heat
Of these current moments
Will melt away
Into the coolness of the life-giving water
That some have sworn able
To heal the broken limbs of the fallen
No matter how great the injury
His heart believing that in time
If angelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s permit
He will rise from this solitary grave
And reassume his days of dreamlike realities
Swearing to himself
To never return
To this place of mourning

Fire Burning
The steady flame
Burning strong like a child does in youth
Flickers only every now and then
During time when the wind is most violent
Having the intentions to try to leave the world in darkness
The absence of light causing for the sight of man
To struggle in discerning
What it is that lies before him
And whether or not it is friend or foe
Or some illusion played on the eyes
A trick performed by a trickster
To remind mortals of their bodily limitations
Deception simple and achievable
By the merest alteration to how something is viewed
The ordinary become extraordinary
From changing the angle it is seen at
And dimming the lights so that the rods and cones of the eye
Gather differently, interpreting the same object differently
Due to the unchangeable mechanics of the eye
The flame burns on
Through the darkening night
And battering rain
Trying to strike it out
So that those living by its warmth
And illumination
Are struck dumb and blind
Wandering aimlessly
Like halfhearted and doubtful pilgrims
Who no longer know
The right direction to take
In order to arrive at the holy city
Finding the rain to be chilling
A cold that sticks to them
With no warmth to chase it from their bones
Causing them to look blindly into the darkness
Cursing their lord
As he has taken the light
And left them to wander
As either a test of faith
Or a proof of faltering love
For a people once treasured
But now led to a torturous life
Of ice-cold faithlessness

Mixed Memories
A sudden stirring of memories
Brought about by the chiming of the clock
Unglues a man
From his deeper consciousness
Returning now to the surface
And the sound that has broken his concentration
Creating for him a puzzle to try to piece together
As his mind will not let him rest
Until he finds the link
Between the sound and the faint memory
Flooding his eyes in the most in-explainable images
The objects presented to him
A riddle he must try to solve
Wondering what makes a vase fall
And a child cry
As the clock cries out
To the injustice done
To those who are simple and young
And those who are unable to handle the responsibility of having a child
From the depths of his memory
He hears his mother’s voice
Cold and cruel and unwilling
To let him return to his toys
Taking the blocks he built dreams with
Making sure to destroy the foundation of hope
Lying deep within the boy
Making him a captive of his own mind
Bound eternally by his mother’s disapproval
Of the cockamamie thought
That a child’s dreams
Can never transform into reality
The boy’s being able to learn
A more valuable lesson
From the truths of the world
That everyone is out for everyone else
And those who haunt your dreams
From day-to-day or from time-to-time
Take pleasure in doing so
As it releases the pain
They buried long ago
Because their mother took their building blocks
And made sure that no dreams
Would ever reemerge from the rubble
Of a heart broken by its own maker

Fulfilled Request
The white pages
Cast a spell on the hand
With pen in hand
Motioning its tightened fingers
Over the appropriate lines
Fulfilling a request
For a failing love
And a dying heart
Black clouds and thunderstorms
Form in the chest of the heartbreaker
Who does not want to lose
But realizes her unworthiness
Of the heart that was given to her
In trust and sacred vows
That came to break apart
And disintegrate
From empty promises
And eye-opening experiences
That brought to life
The true meaning of the word vow
He sees her tears
Hears her pleas
But she has made him anew
Unfeeling, un-healing, unable to wake
And reunite himself
To the soul he was once mated to
In wedlock and spiritual moments
Of the deepest and most physical intimacy
He thinks of it similarly
As to the way she sees the task at hand
He merely fulfilled the request
She was really asking him to perform
With her coldness and empty actions
His inability to find comfort in her arms
Or come to her so that she could bring light to his darkened path
From bliss he awoke to discover
She had transformed from light to dark
And she was weaving a web for him to be kept in
So that he could never leave
And would be forced to remain entangled
Made to experience a dark and sickening love

Unending Request
A thousand roses
Were laid down at the feet of a muse
Her poet, captured eternally
By the beauty of her body and soul
Bargained with the gods
And had them create an extra star
To shine in the sky
Solely for her to smile upon
As the rivers of the world
Formed a choir
Singing to her a song
He had written her
Between the hours of their togetherness
And the rest that came after
The sacred meeting of their flesh
She looked down upon him
Inspiring a thousand more verses
The sweetest, softest proof to him
That she truly was the muse
To inspire him to do more than write verses
As his lips parted and words came to form
An unending request
Bound to a ring worn on the fourth finger
Signifying the love and promise of love
To exist between them always
Her acceptance of his proposal
Got her lifted from the ground
With two strong arms
As he led her through a field of flowers
That would each bloom to reveal
A dream turned reality
A day spent together
From sunrise to sunset
Each kiss shared, planting the seed of love
For the next day
In their garden made from
Holding hands and sweet embraces
Watching as new stars filled the sky underneath them
As they lay looking upward toward heaven
Trying to guess as to what the next day will bring them
Bound eternally
By rings worn on the fourth finger

Queasiness
His stomach churns
Creating the sickening sensation
Of insides coming back out
Reentering the world
In a less definite form
His mind flees to meager prayers
Believing that maybe god would be willing
To push away these feelings
That leave this poor individual
Sickened by himself
Unwilling to look in the mirror
For fear that his skin color has changed
A pallor color replacing
The once sought after body
Of a man half-human, half-god
Now rendered to frail flesh
The body fearing itself
Because it has grown self-conscious
Of its own destructive nature
Each breath seeking to find ways
To disrupt the proper flow of the human form
Desiring to leave the bones brittle
And the heart disenchanted
Preventing the man from dreaming
Leaving him to the tired wakefulness of reality
A place so cold that he is apt
To feel remorsefulness
As his memories become plaguing ghosts
Torturing him playfully
With the days of his youth
When nothing affected him
And his frame was not so easily twisted and broken
His years of greatness
Now seeming short-lived
The sensation in his throat
Rising again
The feeling of queasiness
Forcing his body to bend over
To try to release
The darkened spirits
That have made home in his body
Slowly destroying
And weakening
What once had made him invincible

The Outspoken Devotee
Interrupting the thought of another
He declares his love for this newfound religion
The deity running through his veins
Lifting him skyward
Somewhere between the stars and the galaxies
Swearing to reveal to him
More than the secrets of one world
Unweaving the strands of human makeup
So that for once
The body and soul are simplified
The mind an easily comprehended organ
Wired and manipulated
To only understand certain concepts
Rejecting all out-of-the-box possibilities
Determining them to be brainwashing lies
That could possible alter
A flawless consciousness
If given any consideration
By the entryway he stands
Psychically knowing that one more step forward
Will put him over the edge
Transforming him into another
To have eaten from the tree of knowledge
He finds himself bound to a standstill moment
Remembering the story of his forefather
The desire for all-knowingness
Appealing to everyman
Yet remembering from a set example
The fullness of the deityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wrath
As he has no desire for an understudy or a sidekick
As well as suspecting that maybe
The burning sensation moving through his body
Is of the devilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand
Mere trickery performed by the Lord of Demons
As he slivers invisibly and unfelt
Into the heart of an outspoken devotee
Who underneath the skin
Remains a doubting Thomas
While he stands amongst
Faithful lambs, who only praise
The fine creations of a maker
Who was able to challenge the faithful with demons
Well aware of who would conquer evil
And who would be left standing still

Unwritten Codes
The upturned sand
Reveals no ancient tablets
To the eyes searching for recordings
Of how hierarchy and social codes
Came to exist for the humans now in bondage
Due to their structural, naturalized history
Simply reducible to being explained
As “that’s just the way it is
And the way it’s always been”
The man’s mind wanting to dig deeper
To discover in tangible form
These lived-by and well-accepted rules
Leaves no room to consider
That the tablets sought after
May not be in the same written language
The person has learned and adapted himself to
Knowing only different combinations
Of twenty-six characters
Unable to decipher any other code or prior language…
Sickened by the acceptance that
This one soul-searching individual
Has no ability to authenticate any tablet
Requires that the ancient history
Be turned over to the hands of another
Or accept bitterly
That some stories will remain untold
As every decipher is sure to bring into the words’ meaning
His own history
Knowing that a piece of himself
Will continue on
In the way that the story is read
All history
Easily reducible
To who wrote it down
And the words he chose to use
For the image of the moment
Is never able to be captured
Exactly as it happened
Humans forever limited
By their meager ability to decipher
And retranslate
Unwritten code

Rapture
Her heaven falls from its stand
Where his love had once held it
Swearing that the enclosure
Was so strong that no harm or danger
Could ever come to her
For he would be her knight of words of romance
Reaching to her in ways
She had never been touched before
His poems feeling like the rapture to her
Divine words spoken honestly
Telling of a love that would never fade
As the sweetest moments of life
Became intertwined like two hands
Refusing to let go of each other
As it was a small physical gesture
Signaling to each passerby
That those two hands
And the bodies they were attached to
Had chosen each other
As lovers and soul mates
Fated together by heart and body
The most vital parts of each humanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s identity
Yet as his heart weakened
And the reality of true identity
Was uncovered like one of the Gnostic gospels
He pushed away from her
Seeing her true form
Cursing god for his deceit
As he had protected the heart and heaven of a devil
And let her tear apart his righteousness
And the inner beauty he had once prided himself in
Yet standing by a still and silent pond
He cannot help but recall the sweetness
Of the now twisted memory
When the two of them
Had lain together
Beneath a twilight sky
Counting stars
Each able to symbolize
A proof of love
They shared for each other
And would continue to share
Until their final setting sun

V. COIL

Devastated
His pre-thought of words of seduction
That had been tested aloud in a house with only one inhabitant
Were recorded carefully onto the page
To be printed, studied, and looked over
So that when he and his desired
Perfectly sculpted soul mate
Came to first exchange words
There would be no chance
For flawed words
The charm of each consonant and its pronunciation
Spellbinding to his listener
Each word leading him closer
To taking her home and making her his possession
As he returns to his words
He discovers an error message and a loss of data
His elegantly constructed conversations
Now a blank page
Where the success for his deepest desires
Had bloomed into dreams soon-to-come-true
But now his mind races
To try to remember and reconstruct
The lines he had perfected
Only able to capture one or two unforgettable phrases
His fears rise and his body sweats
Now picturing himself mute
During their first date
Each question she asks him
Receiving only the reply of pleading eyes
Trapped wordless within himself
Overanalyzing the words he could speak
Feeling that each would be a linguistic disaster
Hoping that maybe by some holy graces
She will remain in his presence
Out of sympathy for a mute man
So that he can try to remember her body and form and soulfulness
Though she had already admitted to have fallen for him
Swept away and into him because of his way with words
But the dreaded knowing
Of having words that are not properly constructed
And have gone untested
Leaves him in devastation
Willing to put to rest his dreams
For the woman he desires, he can no longer speak to

The Current
He is a young boy of seven
Speaking to her romantically of their love
In a manner that is long beyond is years
He looks soulfully into the water
Taking her hand and holding it
More delicately than he had ever held it before
Treating her for the first time
As if she were the most precious and fragile creation
The hands of God had ever made
She tries to see as he sees
Allowing the water to take on metaphysical value
As he points to the current
Explaining that just like the water
The two of them are pulled in a certain direction
Having little choice
In some of the decisions that needed to be made
He takes full possession of her hand
First balling it up in his
And then moving it over his heart
Uncurling the fingers
And holding them against the steady beat in his chest
The touch, spiritual
Yet erotic
As he desires to join their flesh
To become young
Long before the destined time
Impatient in watching
The entire plan unfold
Knowing from his dreams and visions
The softness of her lips
The warmth of her flesh
And how the sweetness of her form
Keeps him intertwined with her
Tangled up in the sheets
Hoping that for once
Morning will never come
And their night of togetherness
Will last for as long as their passion-struck bodies
Continue to meet
As love-words flow from them
In a current that they cannot resist

Morningrise
She unlaces her clothing shyly
As if beneath the covering she is nothing but poetic verses
Covered by a thin layer of skin
Touchable by the human hands
Searching for her
As if she were the key to some mystery never solved
He cannot help but look upon her
Feeling the trite desire to compare her to the rising sun
Yet looking longer into her fiery eyes
He discovers that she is more like the morningrise
The creation of a new day for all
The movement of her gentle hands
Bringing to life the beauteous light
That warms of the face of every person
And welcomes them softly into the start of the next day
And the continuation of life
***
Naked before him
She looks into the eyes of this poetic man
Contemplating what false sense of beauty
He beholds in her
Each time she breathes or smiles
Or slowly moves her hand from side to side
The entirety of his being
Captured by the simplicity
Of her common and meaningless actions
She desires to wake him from his musings
As her body becomes overtaken by lust
Wanting to push him down upon the mattress
So that he may ravish her and set free his dark wishes
In physical form
Something she will be able to feel
Rather than forced to read and only imagine
The idea of being someone’s “morningrise”
Not as satisfying
As feeling a lover’s breath
Hot against her skin
Reminding her of the pleasures
A poet’s words
Will always fall short of

Coil
A strand of her hair
Is discovered wrapped around
An old, grayed, rusted key
Used to open a chest that they had used
As love-struck fools
Who sought to keep contained
Promises that would never be broken
Consciously he tries to convince himself
He no longer knows where the chest is buried
And that the promises inside have already suffocated and died
The woman having gone and faded into the night
As if she were merely a temporary blissful delusion
Brought on by his inability to accept
The rooms of solitude and loneliness he built for himself
Having conceptualized oneness as being
A way to simplify having to lose others
The line connecting from one heart to another
Never having to be severed
For there was never a connection to begin with
He discovers himself uncontrollably weeping
Holding the key in his hand awkwardly
The cold metal pressing against his eyelids
As if they were going to give him a deeper insight
Into this rediscovered emotional turmoil
Forced to feel the softness of her hair
Coiled around the key
The same way it has remained
Wrapped tightly around his soul
Constraining him and keeping him silent
When he has gone to speak to another
Hoping to chase away temporarily
The black clouds and darkness
Refusing to let up
Ever since he and his beloved
Sought to discover new hearts
To wrap themselves around
Love being rendered to a rational understanding
Rather than some simpletonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s misguided emotional assessment
Because all love â&#x20AC;&#x153;really wasâ&#x20AC;? and would every be
Was the tight wrappings of hair around the heart
Promising than any great disobedience
Would cause its beating to cease

Kiss The Angel
The boy suffers a fatalistic punishment
Being forced to kiss the angel
After having his mortal body
Drowned in the holy water
He is unprepared for her dry, calloused lips
And the displeasure resting in her eyes
He, not expecting her to be unforgiving
Fidgets uncomfortably with his fingers
Imagining an even more unforgiving God
Waiting to speak to him
As soon as he has received proper punishment
From an angel who truly respect
His love and glory and greatness
The boy is unexpectedly taken a hold of
His lips forcibly parted
To take a kiss he has never had before
The angelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tongue moving down his throat
Quick and slithering like a serpent
And looking into his eyes
As if through the kiss she were transferring herself
Into him
The perfection that he should have attained
With his allotted amount of time on earth
When the angel pulls back from the kiss
The boy finds himself desperately gasping
To fill himself with oxygen
Yet feeling suddenly as if he does not have lungs
Dreading that maybe
Instead of giving him something greater
The angel, with her calloused lips
Took from him all the elements that made him human
So that each breath he took
Felt unknown to him
His body and the memories of his life
Now seeming foreign
His human form now bound anew
To lungless breathing
Heartless beating
And mindless thinking
All brought about
From an angelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kiss

Goddess
Her smile caused a chain reaction
His lips spreading from side to side
Looking back toward her godliness
Like a thankful pilgrim
Having seen the light
During the darkest part of his journey
Once, then twice
She touches the skin of his arm
Tracing her fingers
Up toward his shoulders
Where she pauses for a moment
Smiling wider and laughing the ecstasy-filled laugh
That had woken him from so many a-dream
He feels he should try to say something
To make eye contact and share words
That will surely transform the night into a memory
Of when the two of them had first met
Two pilgrims on the same journey
She stops his mind from thinking
With the passion of lips upon lips
And her dark skin touching against his light
Each move making them closer
More in tune with one another
The swing and sway of their bodies
Becoming the sweetest, most sacred, poetry
His mind no longer thinking of human trivialities
He is free to enjoy wholly the flesh before him and all around him
Taking in each part of her by pressing his lips
Against her delicate frame
And though he knows he does not need to speak
The word â&#x20AC;&#x153;goddessâ&#x20AC;? escapes his mouth
Then feeling again the waves of pleasure
Drowning him in her beauty and their fleshly motions
He falls back into the swing and sway
Of desire, desire that cannot be contained within memory
But must be relived
By these two same bodies
Joining together
On a night where the hopelessness of pilgrimage
Moves through the skin
Turning light to dark

Undying
Thousands of verses
Still sing like the heavenly choir
Though her body has been buried beneath the earth
He, still writing
Cannot turn away
From his task at hand
To resurrect her again and again
From memory
His prior experiences with her
Undoing the laws of nature
To bring her back to him
Feeling her breath against his neck
Her whispers upon his ear
The familiarity of her smile
The bittersweet memories
Fueling his heart and keeping it beating
Through the darkened days
And lonesome nights
Where the sound of her beside him
Is replaced by the creaking ceiling
And the hum of the refrigerator
That should have been replaced years ago
Back when they were both younger
He has a reflective thought
Linking memory to undying
A simple play on words
Memory being a link to the past
Remembrances of younger days and younger limbs
A re-livable moment that erases the present
Returning the skin and bone of the person
To its glory days
When all things were doable
(undoing the dying of the body)
He stirs his tired mind from its musings
Knowing that there is no time for re-attaining youth
When there are verses to be written
Poetical ways to resurrect and immortalize his beloved
Who could not discover a way to un-die
Prior to her last breath, outlining to her poet
The limitations of human life

Inheritance
His inheritance was not a black and white declaration
Recorded on aging parchment
Nor was it a treasure contained within an old chest
Always seen in passing
Throughout the years of his father’s life
A chest remarked upon
By its current possessor
Saying, “Son, one day, you will learn of its contents
And the riches that can never be taken from you”
His inheritance, instead, was a recording
Of a time that he had thought was surely forgotten
The tape not of the greatest quality
Yet the voices distinct and recognizable
His mother being heard
For the first time in a decade
Her voice as crisp as it once was
When he was a boy
Sitting at the breakfast table
Considering whether or not
Wendy, the girl who sat beside him at school,
Really had fallen for him as hard as she said
The butterflies in her stomach
Refusing to stop their fluttering
So that she was made to lose sleep
Yet, her beauty seeming unaffected
By her restlessness
His father’s voice
Booming, as it always was,
Up until his final days of old age,
Cuts through the room
Shocking at first
By how much louder his voice was
During a time of life
His son is unable to recollect
The sheer power of the voice
Causing for some of the glasses to shake
As a man expresses the joys of becoming
A newly-made father
Shouting to all those around him
Again and again
“That’s my boy, my boy
My boy.”

Circle
The dirt and dust of the road
Still seem unfamiliar
To the eyes that have looked upon them
And the feet that have trodden on them
For days and nights that cannot be measured
As time becomes a mere imagining
To the heat-struck wanderer
Victimized by the very light
Guiding him until the moon rises
And the coyotes call
The traveler, each time seeks
A sign for where to turn
So that he may begin moving in the right direction
Able to make out in the distance
Familiar landmarks
That bring hopefulness
To his weakening body that has been reduced to
Muddied skin, calloused hands and
A pack on his back that loses weight
Yet only seems to grow heavier upon his shoulders
Wanting to return home
To the bed and shaded room
That is his and his alone
Knowing exactly how it will feel
To open his eyes in safety and security
After a long rest from an even longer journey
To hear a certain singing
Arise from the kitchen
As he receives a proper welcoming
The sweetness of her face
Unchanged since he has left
Her red, flowered dress
A treasure so great
He immediately rises to his feet
Unaffected by their ache
As he circles her again and again
Waiting for the proper moment
For when he can lean in
And kiss the lips
That he swore to return to
No matter how lost he became
Or how far he traveled

Devil Woman
Inhuman flesh
Greets his eyes with an erotic dance
Her serpent-like body
Moving to a rhythm
Known only to the darkest parts of the soul
Her smile is made of heavenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bliss
With teeth as white as the clouds
That have circled him for twenty-three years
Her motioning finger, calling him to follow
Is longer, more delicate, and slender
His mind races to thoughts of witchcraft and voodoo
Knowing that to follow her
Or to set one more step in her direction
Is to surrender his soul
Giving up his redemption
For the sake of a night of godly pleasure
His mortal body will be able to recollect
Until the day his bones to turn to dust
The devil enchanting him
With sightlines that will continue on
After the flesh and muscle
Have been picked away
By the scavengers of the night
Meeting her eyes, prior to taking a step forward
He lists his own demands for the loss of his soul
Desiring more than just this one night
But a lifetime of indulgence
Not limited to the bare standards of sex
As he desires to kiss her skin from top to bottom
Feeling the smoothness of her stomach and chest
With his soft lips and wet tongue
Knowing that he must taste all of her
And discover her every inner and outer beauty
For unless he can make his life
Heaven on earth
His conscience will stand in the way
Of giving the devil
What is due to her
Attempting to convince the body
As to why the soul has greater worth
Than the principle of evil
Turned to fleshly desire

A Fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Recollections
He would stand by the fire
With a stick in hand, uncaring to the pain
Forever haunting his limbs
Holding his hand out
As if being free was as simple
As taking anotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fingers
To hold, walking together
Away from bitterness
Letting the mind concern itself
With petty, childish beauties,
Instead of adult complications
Drawing in the sand
An image of a man and a child
He smiles to his father
Feeling the coldness of the elements around him
Well aware from what the angels have said
That life is short and even shorter for some
The grandfather clock ticking in the chest
Of each being
Only able to last as long as the parts can last
And though there are repairs
Able to be made to the mechanics of the timekeeper
The heavens and hells
Of the human mind cannot be slowed
Every breath and action
Recorded down in accordance with fate
The boy even now, in this blessed moment
Hears a whisper from his guardians
Those investors who deal
Wholly and solely
With the frail bodies of mortal men
Who out of the creatorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s compassion
Are given the exact date and time
When their clock will stop completely
The chiming of the twelfth hour
Signaling the dreaded moment
When a father hears a single cry
And finds himself clutching the lifeless body
Of his most beloved child
Who sought to never worry his parents
Of the end
Knowing that fate and the guardians of time
Cannot be reasoned with

Traces
Tears fall with the mind’s rational
That a night of sorrow
Will leave behind no traces
Of the current day soon to fall into memories
Unworthy of being kept for recollection
Since the heart’s ache
Is a parasite
Rather than a prerequisite
Depression feeding of the body’s
Strength for survival
Turning every thought
Into dreams of breathlessness
And eternal stillness
Hope’s voice becoming a whisper
While the reaper
Speaks at a perfect pitch
As he describes the wonders
Of the other side
Where all that has been lost
Is no longer thought of
Nor need be a worry
The heart and soul’s power diminished
As the essence of the person
That once was
Now begins free-floating
Unattached to the materiality of existence
The once sought after tangibility
Of what was really there
Now a mock joke of what was unimportant
Even during days of fleshly living
The newly dead’s eyeless sight
Much more clear now that bodily desires
Are no longer of any concern
The person’s becoming able to dedicate himself
Solely to meditation
Uninterrupted deep thinking
On the subject matters
That used to cause
Physical displeasure
If they were not thought of
In the right mind
The frailty of human life
Traceable by how one
Thinks and feels

Dissipating Madness
Diving underneath the cooling water
Desperateness turns to answered prayers
As the heated anger
Of inconsolable wounds
Fades into the clear blue
Granting the underwater visitor
A momentary break
To clear his mind completely
And meditate upon the upper world
Where men walk erect
Convinced of their refined value
Promoting the false notion
That they are more than beasts
The soundlessness of the water world
Meets him kindly
Causing him to contemplate
The idea of not returning
Allowing himself to have
Undisturbed peacefulness
No longer bothered by the hustle and bustle of bodies
And the loud cries of sirens
Alerting members of an overcrowded blue planet
That a fellow comrade has fallen
And will soon be buried
In a place where the sight of the rotting body
And the smell of the decaying flesh
Will not be a bother to anyone
Holiness and sacredness not as treasured
As the simple necessity to be able to breathe without the fear of vomiting
The passage from life to death
Merely a question of where to put the body
Reflecting on these thoughts
He rises to the top only to breathe in fresh air
Convinced now that nothing will ever return him to
The upright world
Where humanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all chase the same dream
Of being of enough worth
To have their bodies placed in the finest boxes
Underneath the freshest, richest, upturned earth
Where they can rest in royalty
Thinking deeply upon
The link between madness and pettiness

Meditation
Green mossy trees
Hang their branches down
The willows weeping in the distance
Feeling from the footfall of a fragile man
The emptiness he searches for
Because his cup is full
Of wine turned to blood
Bittersweet memories
Of a love faded to panged looks
Shared between eyes no longer sharing
The gateway to the soul
Hurt revealing its true power
To erase away the passion and love
Formed from vows and sacred bonds
The heart’s voice on the matter
Becoming completely drowned out
By the mind’s rationale
The body’s self-defense mechanisms
Refusing to let the same thing happen twice
Sacrificing the sweetest pleasure
It had ever known
And could recover
For security
And endless nights of nightmares
Combated with meditation
The possessor of the body’s attempt to
Try to reconcile himself
So that his own reflection does not feel foreign to him
The paleness of the night
Seeming to now effect
The tone of his skin
A cruel joke, because as he grows as white as the light that will make him warm again
Returning his skin and soul to their natural color
His insides only grow darker
The blackness within him
Thick like tar
Slows his blood
Making each step he takes
Heavy with depression
Leaving an impression on the ground
Able to make willows weep
For a wandering man without his mate
Possessing now
Only a blackened soul

A Fragment of Her Being
She returns to life
After so many restless nights
Close to death
As she now sleeps by another
Yet, returning to him in verses
He recaptures for a moment
The scent of her
And their lovemaking
Still able to feel through memory
How he would keep her
Held against him
After the climax had passed
Having her continue to feel
Him pulsating inside of her
Refusing to let go
Of their entangled flesh
Intoxicating her with the deepest pleasure
Each time she tried to remove herself from him
Though she did not plan to go anywhere
Nor did she want to
It was the flirtatious part of the game
He refills his glass
Catching the reflection of her
As he moves the bottle back
Where it is far away enough not to be knocked over
Yet close enough to comfort him if he needs it
The joints of his fingers older and more achy now
Then they had been when he would have her
As his captive
Unwilling to let her save herself
From what he knew
She truly desired
He parts his lips
Half-expecting
To still receive the kiss
That reminds him the game is not over
There are still moves to be made
The skin and scent of his playmate
Awakening again
The pulsating rhythm
Of his hips against her hips
Pushing toward the heavens

The Circle Completes
Still water stirs
Forming ripples upon its surface
A new life emerging
Breathing its first breath
Genderless and without identity
Knowing only the innate actions
Wired into it
Unaware of its prior death
And the ashes that turned to dust
Carried away by the winds
Removing all traces of the physical form
Once named and valued
For its compassion for life
Commitment to family
And willingness to help aid the community
“More than just a man”
Planned to have been written
Upon its tombstone
If only the body had been produced and buried
Rather than destroyed unknowingly
By the heated elements capable of leaving
Nothing but bones
Taking the flesh and muscle
As if it had always been
The rightful property of the fire god
Who arose to claim the body and perform its ritualistic dance
Unaffected by the screams of a man apologizing to the family he will not return to
Picturing their first-worried, then spiteful faces
As he turns from a missing person
To a deserter
His children soon to learn
Of their father’s faults
Faults their mother had always seen
But kept tucked away
And overlooked
For the sake of the children
As the fire’s dance
Brings an end to his thinking
His lips can’t help but bitterly smile
Thinking of how even after
Twenty years of love and commitment
A woman’s pride
Will always reemerge
To complete the circle

VI. DEADWATER

She Awakens
A life-giving kiss
Is placed upon her eyes
Awakening her in the realm of stars
Looking down upon the darkened earth
She sees the globe no longer as lively as it once was
The running rivers
Now muddied stagnant ponds
Reeking of decayed beauty
Where once perfect natural creations
Had lived peacefully
Never in need of being cleared away
Or relocated
By human hands
Feeling it their responsibility
To make more space
For their master’s desire
The human heart never capable
Of getting its fill
As one’s current greatness
Is belittled by the mind’s imagining
Of what can be accomplished next
Satisfaction and gratification
Growing lesser and yet more and more temporary
Though the planet’s available resources diminish
Forcing man’s heart
To look skyward
Where each person can gain their endless fill
And no one need be denied
Their eternal longings
Seeing this sad state of affairs
She breathes a breath of hope
And watches as a star falls
Into the hands of a man
Still able to feel the ancient magic of natural wonders
And staring up into the blackened night
He remarks like a soon-to-be martyr
That he will walk amongst those with leper-souls
Trying to heal their sickness
Restoring their sight
By revealing the damage
They have done to the fragile,
Helpless earth,
That no longer has room to breathe

Delusions and Fantasies
Proof turns to pleas
As a manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experience with the divine
Is determined to be delusion and fantasy
His own mind getting the best of him
As if he were the same Jack
Who traded a cow for beans
Then was beaten servely
As the seeds never sprouted
A single leaf
While his family starved
And his brother died
Unable to forgive the idiocy of an underdeveloped mind
Still believing the day can belong
To creatures and tales of myth
His faith in magic
Stronger than his love for his family
Going against their wishes
For the sake of having the chance
To dissect the secrets of irreproducible elements
Come across only in times of utter despair
When one is forced to choose what is known
And what could be known
His heart shatters
Unheard and mocked
The message from the people of the stars
Undeliverable to ears that desire
To only hear their own thoughts
Feigning love for the sake of social codes
And moral regulations
The grass turning browner
And the falling water levels
Cause his body to shake with fear
Knowing that soon the earth
Will be nothing but a brown crust
Preparing for itself a petty death
Its selflessness
And willingness to aid humankind
Continuing up until the moment
Of the final break
When lava will flow like the ancient rivers of blue
And all will be erased as if it were
A mere dream or delusion to be wakened from

Unworthiness
Measuring now for the first time
The frail frame of his body
He pinches the muscles of his arms
And concludes that he is too small and weak
To try to save the world
With a fallen star from the sky
And though his heart is metaphorically large
It will not prevent the trees from becoming bare
Their branches falling ill
From a lack of nutrients
No longer able to stand with strong trunks
Or be climbed or challenged by human limbs
Any unexpected weight or pressure
Liable to make the tree
Take its one and only fall
Victimized twice by mankind
First by their greed
And second by their inconsiderateness
For all those around them and not like them
Each thing not human
Has its eyes opened
To its own unworthiness
As each natural creation
Is worthless without its use to man
The trunk and branches of a tree
Severed from its place of residence
So that they can be cut to shapes
Able to be used for the greater good of a people
Who in their heart of hearts
Want nothing more than to provide shelters for their families
And shopping malls for their ever expanding desires
Knowing only so many courses of actions
They themselves can take
Before they are rendered useless
To their own race
Being buried or hanged prematurely
For their unworthiness
Unthinking of how their weight
Has become too much to be held
By the brittle branches
Once climbable by man
When the grass was green
And the waters were blue

Distraught Heart
The misalignment of the heart
Forms from the conflict between
Wanting what canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help but be wanted
And trying to push away
The bittersweet desire to perform actions of righteousness
The body defending itself
By forcing sickness upon itself
Signaling to its owner a fair warning
That though something can be done for nothing
Every human still requires his or her indulgences
The sweet, intoxicating pleasures
Capable of turning some to gluttons
Wasting their riches
While others stretch themselves beyond their means
And then are left as petty men and women
Willing to sacrifice their self-respect
Groveling on their knees, begging
For a temporary return to the pleasures
Treasured by their bodies
Convincing themselves that indulgence alone could maintain the strength of the body
And would do so, if they could only
Hold again in their hands, the sweet addictions
Consuming them and making them forget
Life before the sickly sensations of
What the body deems necessary
Overpowering the will of its personage
To attain what it claims itself worthy of
The mind unable to overcome its needs, being reduced to
Its original form as an organ
Programmed to move the body
As it desires to be moved
Too undeveloped at the moment
To try to make a stand
By using rationale
Or setting blockades
To refuse the addict
The drug that consumes the core of humanness
Replacing it with a mindless zombie
Seeking to feel the high
Of lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lifelessness
As each step away from selflessness
Leaves the person without an identity
Begging on hands and knees amongst crowded streets
For someone to tell them their name

Seeking Slumber
The yellowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sun
Turning to a fire-red
Then purple sky
Clouds his eyes
With haziness, the oncoming night
Transparent and thick
His each step
Weighed down by the delectable thought
Of entering into the blackness
Of unconsciousness
Where dreams will ebb and flow
Held onto for only the first few moments of waking
When the body feels ready
To restart its task
The many miles to be walked for the day
Waiting patiently for the first step to be taken
Knowing that the traveler
Is still semi-drunk from sleep
His stumbling and low, groggy speech
A sure sign to the people passing by
That his still-tired mind requires a quicker return to the living world
An ailment easily remedied by the cocoa plant
Yet, wakening from his dream of dreaming
His feet move forward into the heavy darkness
As his heart trembles from the thought of lost time
Each moment lived of greater value than the one before it
As he much reach the top of every hill and every rooftop
Hoping that from every person he speaks to
The possibility of someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s listening to his words
Will arise
For when he knows
He has a follower
A true believer of his prophecies
His eyes will close peacefully
Entering into the well-deserved sleep
Of a man who chose to deliver the message of the divine
Before tending to his mortal needs
Believing with his whole heart
That by never wasting a waking moment
Or spending any time with his eyes wide shut
He would catch the eye of a soul
Who believed the same way he did
Unafraid to sacrifice mortal needs for godly divinations

A Mourner’s Tale
Truly unknowing
To the amount of days that had passed
His mouth made poor conversation
With the ears of a stargazer
Who claimed to have seen
The strangest phenomenon
On a night where it seemed
A woman made of stars and the elements of space
Had stirred from her resting place into the heavens
To send to the earth
A falling star containing all the secrets
Of each possible future for humankind
However, the man’s claiming to have seen such a sight
Rendered him to be spoken of in terms of senility
His great finding
Becoming a mourner’s tale
As his heart new the greater underlying value of the message
The earth crying beside him silently
Growing accepting of its inevitable doom
Suddenly, stirring from the simple drone
Of human communication
The trusted deliverer of the goddess’s message
Stares wide-eyed and open-mouthed
At the elder standing beside him
Struggling to breathe calmly
As the sheer, overpowering joy of finding
Someone to share his proof of the fateful night
That the gods intervened
Overpowers him
His hands reach desperately to his pack
Ready to unwrap the leather protecting
Of the star holding the secrets of their world
While the other man, first confused, then understanding
Silently breathes words of thanks
For the reassurance that his senility
Was merely an improper label put on him by the nincompoops
Who refused to believe in the possibility
Of holy stars falling from the sky
Warning man that his greed must be put to rest
Or such a great price would have to be paid
That not even the makers of heaven and earth
And all other worlds
Could intervene a second time

Half-Alive
Across the world
He awakens
Speaking of a dream
Laced with blasphemy
Two men standing together
Talking in tongues
Of the great changes that must be made
In the heart of each human being
In order for the world to continue
Otherwise the skies will turn
Black and birdless
As blood rains down from the clouds above
People growing fearful of stepping outside their doors
As judgments similar to the plagues
Are hurled down upon them
Hiding like fearful children
Believing that by remaining
In the lowest levels of their homes
They will remain untouched and un-judged
Yet, as the earth crumbles
And god appears to softly say that he had no part
In the current destruction
The stars will shine visibly to the eyes of man
For the first time during daylight hours
Giving humans the slightest inkling
That something has truly gone wrong
The atmosphere no longer seeming to hold
Causing for humanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s to gasp for air
Half-alive, like the mother they drained of milk
And disrespected after they had grown
Strong enough to fend for themselves
Yet, now wishing
They could revert, and turn back the clock
To find themselves
In the womb again
Convincing themselves that this time
When they are born
They will not drain to the bone
The mother that still requires
Blood and muscle
To pump life into all those
Seeking to live
On a planet believed to be
The land of milk and honey

Ancient Riddles
‘
Sitting on his grandfather’s knee
The wizened man speaks to him
In ancient riddles
Of days to come
Every word a conundrum
Questioning the child to ponder
What rises like the sun
Yet falls like the moon
Into an empty space
Untraceable by the human eye
Yet fully visible
To the panicked soul
His grandfather offers him a hint
Taking the child’s hand and resting it against
His whimpering heart
Beating like the very key to the puzzle
Yet stumping the child
Further complicating the riddle
That if answered
Sets every man free
Making him a master of himself
***
He wonders if his grandfather saw him now
Aged, and wizened,
No longer a young boy
Hoping to conquer the world
And now sympathetic to the tragedy
Of having to watch the planet
Crumble apart more and more each day
Would his answer to the riddle be correct
The starlight in his hands
Feeling as sacred as his grandfather’s heartbeat
The timepiece used to measure life
He wonders now
Like a child again
If the starlight could be used
Like healing blood
To fill the earth’s cracks and crevices
The man becoming a boy again
Rushing with the few medical tools he has
To try to dress a wound
That could prove fatal
If not properly wrapped and bandaged

Deadwater
Standing atop
The cracked and dried mud
Of a giant crater
He feels the momentary shock
Of having to see with his own two eyes
The sight of dead water
All thirst
Now unquenchable
Human’s awakening to the bitter realization
That every possible option for survival
Was drained too low and too fast
To ever be replenishable
There is talk of rewriting
Human’s genetic code
So there framework does not need
To consist so much of water
While having the replacement elements of life
Consist of elements so common
And inexpensive
That not even one of the seven billion people
Upon the earth
Will need be left behind
When the race evolves globally
Human’s greediness not stretching so far
That it would refuse life to those already alive
And each new child
Born into this waterless world
Will never have to think of
How things have changed
Only having to listen
From time to time
To his forefather’s and foremother’s remembering
The distant past
When something called grass
Grew abundantly
Giving the earth its green tinge
A time when if hot days
Were to roll around
One could find pleasurable relief
In dressing in less clothes
Submerging his or her body
In the cold wetness
Where a crater now resides

Blood For Blood
The earth’s last remark
Was to seek revenge
After accepting its’ having been betrayed
By the empty vows of inhabitants
Who had taught themselves
A language of meaning
Developing words and phrases such as love and always and forever
To draw in others of a foreign tongue
So that they could learn the words
And not only speak them
But experience them as well
Becoming windswept by their meanings
Left head over heels and goo-goo gaga
The earth’s having believed
That words were enough to live by
Allowed itself to lower its guard
While finding every possible way
To make sure that humans would awaken each day
To a sunrise
While a sunset would follow
After a day of hard labor
Offering as many natural beauties as it had
In order to try to win the hearts
Of those who swore to only love
Even when love was pain
And the earth was forced
To bleed itself
For its lovers’ needs and gratifications
Humans’ reassuring the earth
It needed to be done
For their hearts would break without it
Having nothing now
But an irreparable body
And the strongest feeling to never trust anyone
Not of the same making
The earth opens its every healing wound
To claim the lives of liars and backstabbers
Laughing like one who has stepped into the darkness
Never to return
Repeating like a mantra
Blood for blood…..
Blood for blood

Songless
As the mountains fall before him
And the birds tumble
Like warriors slaughter before battle
He feels in the pit of him
A songlessness
As he is no longer able to rise
Like the prophet
Who sees destruction
Not as a present happening
But a godheadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s forewarning
The deadness of the earth, nothing more than a farce
A covering that humans cannot undo
Until they see the wrongfulness of their actions
Taking a hold of their damaged lover and friend
Who has stood beside their side
Sacrificing themselves even as death came
To stand beside them, whispering the day and hours
Left for them to live
Holding out an hourglass
That measured the remaining time more realistically
With the blood of the dying
Each drop a familiar sight
To the weakening body
Whose eyes have to strain while the mind tries to discern
The meaning of each passing moment
Exhausted, he lays down
Upon the fragile, crumbling ground
To drift into the hopeful sleeplessness
Wishing to believe that when he awakens
He will not be on the other side
Standing hand-in-hand with the reaper
But rather, reawakening to an earlier time
A long lost youth
Where his arms were draped around
The body of his loved one
And a steady stream of life
Flowed always within reach
His soul, no matter what the time of day,
Singing a song of thankfulness
For having been given the chance
To live on a beauteous green and blue planet
Where he discovered love
And could live dreamily whether asleep or awake

She Reenters Him
He awakens to find himself
Tangled in the sheets of a bed
Her lips pressed against his cheek
Smiling curiously
Asking him what he has dreamed
Her body is made of stars and space
Her scent containing all the secrets
Of what humans call “God”
She positions herself on top of him
Motioning her flesh so that he enters into her
And unknowingly, she reenters him
The heat of the their bodies
Reconnecting them in ways
Mortals and gods were not meant to meet
He wants to speak her name aloud
And use the words of his heart-language
To explain that he has failed her and the world has ended
The earth’s becoming nothing more
Than a memory to those who saw the destruction from a distance
She catches his thoughts and forces them away
Sympathetic to his lack of understanding
Rocking back and forth
In the rhythmic motions of passion
She has him forget
The troublesome tasks he set himself upon
For she had not considered
His fluency in the language of stars
So now, as they lay together
He, her chosen one
She speaks to him
In the language he has always known
Explaining delicately
As if she were the petal of a rose
All the things he should come to know of himself
Touching him gracefully
Feeling the physical desire for her mate rise high again
She whispers into his ear
Even if the blessed planet holding so many lives in the balance
Is to turn to deadwater
And crumble to forgotten dust
The real world is inside of you

VII. HOURS OF WEALTH

Isolation
From the empty waters of his eyes
He prays words of isolation
So that as his body dissipates
He will need not worry of those
Who would have called to him
In his passing away
Trying to convince him to stay
And breathe another breath
Rather than allow him to disappear
Into the dirt of the ground
Joining with the natural world
He thought so fondly of
As he stood upon its many surfaces
Overtaken by the sweetness of a breeze
Or the elegant beauty
Of a falling leaf, who unafraid
Looks down upon the ground
Accepting of the fact that he knows
A childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s feet will trample him
Or his fingers will pull him apart
In small pieces, the boyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s joy
Escaping his lips in small giggles
As he is only given three months of the year
To feel the crinkled leaves
Between his fingers and against the roughness of his hands
He smiles, melting away
Into the thought of a life
Of formlessness
His body no longer necessary
On the other side
A world where each is in isolation
Though they are free to watch and listen to the bodies
Making chatter, blissfully unaware
Of their eventual need and desire
To leave secretly in the middle of the night
To a place where no others will follow
And there, they will lay
Peacefully upon the ground
Ready to be taken
Unnoticed and unaccounted for
Into a world
Where one can always look
But never touch

Tainted Reflection
Moving his fingers across
The dirtied mirror
He hopes that by washing the glass
His reflection will change
Becoming less tainted and darkened
His eyes now having a blackness to them
Never there when he was his younger self
A spry, love-struck, romantic
Finding around every corner
The awe-inspiring beauties of the world
That were so perfectly mixed
With humans relation to them
Yet, now he twists and turns his own skin
Trying to rediscover the self
He had come to think of as his identity
Scared by the bitterness of his own voice
Secretly wanting to run from himself
If it were only possible
But as his own monsterly shadow
Waves at him mockingly
His mind sinks into the reality of his situation
Knowing now that he has the mind of Jekyll
And the body of Hyde
Slowly becoming swallowed by his splitting self
No longer able to be one or the other
Forced to wear a monsterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s skin
Trapped, unheard within the mind
Screaming desperately like a child
Experiencing the reality of his fears
His parents having been wrong
When they said it was all make-believe
A mere production of an overactive imagination
His hands shake desperately
As he wishes that he could reach into a nearby drawer
And take a hold of the only thing
That could bring an end to this madness
As he falls weakly into the hands of another
Who seeks to do him harm
Hyde transforming himself
From a parasite to the host
Granting himself full control
Of which he felt he always had a rightful claim to

Dirtied
Though the hands of a servant girl
Dip a clean towel
Into hot, fresh water
To rub against the skin of her master
No matter how much he is washed
Or how gently or roughly she touches him
His skin remains dirtied
Having the grime and the horrors of his experiences
Unable to be removed from him
His eyes well with tears
That turn to blood
Re-covering his aged face
With the guilt of the lives
He has taken in order to keep his own
Breaking down unexpectedly
She feels fearful to see him
As a weeping child
Reaching out for her, the arms of a woman
The only thing capable of keeping his fragile foundation
From crumbling completely
His words come out as unintelligible cries
As he whimpers against her sky
Trying to explain how he can never truly be himself again
After violence became a necessity
His mind still remembering
Slamming the skull of a villager
Against the ground until his brains splattered
Or when he tackled and beat a man
Walking peacefully through the night
For the sake of guaranteed safety
Telling the frightened father and husband
That if he were to tell anyone
He had seen someone, his body would be left
Floating in the stream
Outside his familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house
His child wakening to see
That his breadwinner and protector
Was now a lopsided, floating object
That even when cleaned and prepared for a proper burial
Would never again have the same attractiveness
Before becoming dirtied and bloated from the cold water of the stream
Where servants gathered the necessary ingredients
For their masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bath

New Words
As if un-writing
Each page of life
He had recorded so morbidly
In order to keep a perfect account
Of the misfortune bestowed upon him
From god’s fateful hand
He finds in himself now
A momentary lapse
Of restful awakening
Where his flesh and bone remain the same
But he is reborn within
Pushing aside the foolish desire
Of reclaiming his old youth
Deciding to start anew instead of holding onto the past
Declaring the breaths he breathes
To be his first, the world
A sight to be seen for the very first time
And as the heat of the sun touches against him
Without his prior understanding
Of what man has deemed it to be
He experiences without thought or rational
The wonders of the world around him
The grass beneath him feeling like sharp blades
Unable to cut his tough flesh
His speech being what humans would deem “prattling”
The words unintelligible
Having the utmost value only to the one speaking
As he assigns each object of the world
His own word, constructed from thought-sounds
Not preordained syllables
He alters the mortality of his human frame
The possibility of an end seeming unattractive to him
When daily beauties are created in his place of residence
He does away with death
And institutes something like immortality
But called by a different name
For what he has made himself into isn’t a god
It is merely an endlessness
A refusal to let the body age
Keeping it in its prime
As the man laughs in his own personal tongue
At those accepting their fate
Borne from another’s mouth

Meditation II
From the numbness
Of deep breathing and pure relaxation
He sees her arise from memory
Reliving one of the many darknesses clouding his mind
He finds it difficult to forgive himself
Hearing her tears and her utter desperation
As he slips away further and further into a different skin
Unable to recall for her the man she fell in love with
Once soft lips, now rough and hardened
Unwilling to kiss her, but rather ask that she quiet herself
And silence her despair, because she was disturbing his peace
And he was angered by her despair
As she was not the one truly in pain
All her miseries being of her own making
He reflects upon his feelings of rightness in those moments
Utterly disgusted by the person he was
And the person he may quickly transform back into
If close to her under those circumstances again
Hearing his rising voice
And bitter remarks of love turned to hate
Echoing in the back of his mind
He always so cruel, she always weak and powerless
Only breaking from his madness, sadness, and broken dreams
He assures himself that though the heartbreak and separation
Drain on him and plant seeds of impossible hopes and dreams
The distance between them as lovers
And the continuing bond of friendship
Is enough to keep them both enough above water
So that they are not drowning
And the two of them are still able to make eye contact
Smiling at each other through tears
Of a once lived dream that has now turned to a haunting nightmare
Forcing each to wake from a time that once was
And can never be again
Breathing deeply and trying to reenter his place of peace
He imagines opening his eyes
To discover a strand of her hair
Laying delicately against his pillow
A sweet and sorrowful reminder
That though sometimes there has to be an early ending to the story
Life can never un-write the lives we have led

Watershed
Similar to an old, paint-peeling boathouse
The watershed stands as a building
Containing need-to-be-forgotten memories
Bringing more tears than sweet reflections
Of a time once lived
Drunk on misery
He fumbles for his keys
So that he may unlock the door
And lay in the echoes of his old flame
Feeling her words take form
Like the ending verses of his life
Being sung to him in a whispering voice
That makes him want to reach out again
To a place he once called home
A perfect image of her face
Reflects on the surface of the water
The ripple around her
Becoming the strands of her hair
As she tries to coax him into the water with her sirenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s song
Waves rising to become the arms and hands
That once held him so delicately
Throughout the night
When they would lay together
During the months of summer heat
Letting the outside world melt away
So that all of existence was simply
Their two bodies pressing against each other
Unaware of the dangers and hardships
That would tear them apart
From the heart to the mind to the soul
The darkness traveling quickly
Anxious to claim another thought-to-be sacred love
His eyes blink at the sight before him
Having fallen into a state of hypnosis
He is now frightened to see that his body
Is half-submerged in the black pool of the watershed
And if he hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stirred from dreaming at the very moment he did
Her watery arms would have pulled him completely down
Where she would have made him lay with her
Convincing him with sweet words and soft kisses
That there was no world outside the two of them

Displeasing
Seeing him now
As a wilted rose
Her mind is overtaken
By the sickening feeling of satisfaction
Realizing that there will be nothing more
To come from him
His mouth forever parted, yet wordless
Eyes looking heaven bound
Unconcerned with her presence
Her hands wish to enter into his coffin
To resuscitate his lifeless, peaceful body
As she now discovers the deepest displeasure
From having to live without him
Though underneath this desire
To return him to life
Their lies the counteracting desire
To take pleasure in watching him die again
An endless cycle of wants and needs
Leaving her like a dog
Chasing its own tail
Unthinking of the reasons for her actions
Too caught up in the heart of the matter
Reverting from a creature of elegance and logic
To a tamed pet, entertaining her master
With her antics
He smiles sweetly in the other world
Feeling as if he has received what he was long overdue
Her crumbling without him
Something he always tried to explain to her
Out of love for their soulful bond
During times when she had only looked to him
With distaste for their dependency on each other
He wishes he could place a rose by her window
A romantic gesture to calm her heart
But now limited to his formless body
He can only look down upon her
With a feeling of pleasure and displeasure
As he will never be given the chance again
To try to show her
How beauteous their lives could be
If she could only accept that she needed him

The Heartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Realignment
In deep sleep
The heart returns
To ancient magic
Existing prior to its first beat
Inside the chest of Adam
It repeats a mantra of sacred prayer
To have the blood and body
Realign themselves after having been
Bruised and pulled apart
From where they had once stood
As a testament to a perfectly constructed being
The heart laughs at the madness
Man forces upon himself
Convinced that solitude and isolation
Will surely lead him to his own destruction
Fearful of the inability to express to anyone
The deep pains
Swelling inside of him
Making him look back in time
To see if the ghost of himself
Will make a different choice
Saying the right words this time around
While being less concerned with keeping hold to the money in his pocket
So that he may awaken again
Into the life constructed from chance
And maintained from the unwavering desire
Of two seeking to become one
Wrapped in blankets and arms
Sleeping through the reality of life
In order to maintain the dream
Able to be kept alive as long as the doors never open
And the days remain undistinguishable
Love blending each moment
By turning each thought and feeling
To a kiss or a soft caress
Each attempt to rise from their grounds of lovemaking
Met with a tender laugh
As the legs remain weak
And the heart is overpowered by its own indulgence
In the supreme, intoxicating pleasure
Of believing that love can last
As long as the days remain outside of locked doors

Blindness
Well beyond the hours of rest
His eyes remain closed
Even when opened
Refusing to look anymore
Upon the scenery of a life
Where the green grass and bright sun
Are only a mocking gesture
Given to those who can afford nothing else
As life refuses them every richness
Swallowing them up in days strung together
Like bitter proof that some truly are cursed
Never having a good day
To recall and chase away the madness
Of having to look into the mirror
Seeing only a struggle reflected back at them
Trying to explain as gently as possible
That the roots planted in hopefulness
Have long been dug up
And tossed away for the sake of another
Who sought to reap more joy and beauty
Uncaring to the life destroyed and falling by the wayside
As if he were nothing but a nuisance
Needing to be removed by any means necessary
Not counted as one of the many peoples of a society
Being considered only as an asset
Property of the town
With no one desiring to claim direct ownership
Unfeeling as to what he has seen
And how his eyes have been left in eternal blackness
His own mind and body abandoning him
Resigning themselves from the duty
Of having to try to create hopeful delusions
From despairing sights
Where if the ears are left unattended
The darkest song of sorrow
Will creep in and climb into the brain
Planting seeds of sorrow
Humming merrily
At the beauteous destruction
Leaving the hopeful blinded
Reaching out in the darkness
To try to find something to restore a sense of comfort
Yet finding only the familiar figures
Of those who never sought to possess him

Change and Chains
A stream of blood
Only flows in one direction
And any passengers coming along for the ride
Can try as they may
To backpedal toward uncharted territory
But the quick movement of the current
Proves to the curiosity of the mind
That there is no way to stray
From the heartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s charted course
Freewillâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s being a mere dreamscape
The mind allows itself to fall into
After spending too much time
With the binding chains of reality
Clamped around the hands and feet
A twisted smiling having marked the body of one
Who truly believed that by changing his way of living
He could re-assimilate himself into life
And feel again the warmth that accompanies happiness and peace
But stirred from the delusion and dreamscape
He sees the grey lighting
Of the surrounding world
Welcome him a second time
To the way things really are
It not mattering who is banished
From his line of sight
For giving up the battle and submitting
To the same cowardice of every other weak-bodied and fragile hearted man
Shall live with him always, floating amongst
The foggy thoughts that meet him
With bleak considerations and propositions
As to how life can still be rewritten
So that every choice made seems rationale
Rather than cold and cruel
The fickleness of the heart
Able to be melted away and replaced
By a flawless thought that takes the body and soul
And sends it soaring upward and outward
To where it can fly free
Amongst the birds of the blue sky
Unbound by the chains of a life
Only thought to have lost its ability
To choose its own direction
And taste again the warmth of happiness

Defying
He could not bare to stay on his knees and longer
Being controlled by a sadistic angel
Who sought to reveal to her father
The true meaning of the word love
Showingthe sickness of the body
Formed from the promise of the heart
Loyaltyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s flawlessness being a myth
As selflessness proves unwise
As the body is mutilated
For no other reason than testing the limitations
Of what one heart can handle
Until it turns on its partner
Defying every oath and sworn proclamation
Having its eyes opened to unrecoverable hurts
Memory becoming burdensome as the thought of moving forward and forgiving
The person who broke the spell of love to ease their curiosity
Causes the soul to turn black toward the one cherished so dearly
The world outside of her presence seeming so much brighter
And willing to hold him close as if he is now seen to be
A greater man for his strength in staying
And his strength in leaving, truly knowing
That underneath what he will sacrifice for his loved one
His true self still breathes and lives
Waiting to reemerge, unattached to the foolish promises
Made on a day when love had just transformed
From a sleeping creature into a butterfly
The entirety of the world now discoverable
By the light, free-flying creature
Whose existence was void of all darkness
Defying the laws of what could and could not be attained
Knowing that with its partner beside it
Every want and desire was within reach
All it took was the flutter of wings
Moving toward a soon-to-be-achieved goal
Where the reward was even sweeter
Because a best friend was there to take each step as well
Never deserting or straying from its partnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s path
To pursue a greater desire lying underneath
The sun that reflected the same redness of a heart
That beat only for its beloved
The two of them interlocked
Flying toward the end of one day and into the beginning of another
Defying the odds of when and where
Love begins and ends

One Last Lullaby
A child lies on its back
Wrapped in white, arms outstretched
Hoping to be met with the singsong words
Of one last lullaby
Before being sent away
To the thoughtlessness of early existence
Too young to dream
Finding the blanket of darkness placed over its eyes
To be the strangest of magic
As his vision melts away
And his body refuses to let him
Continue his tests of audible sounds and controlled mobility
She meets his starry-eyed gaze
Taking in his supreme beauty
As a human form without a set identity
The only thing holding any possession over him
Is a name, changeable if he so desires
When he comes of age
Proving his ability to survive
The trials and tribulations of existence
Those labeled unable rise to the task
Becoming marked as dead weight
Able to be removed if extermination becomes necessary
The earth only granting so much space to its inhabitants
Leaving no reason to waste space
On those unable to contribute to the greater good of the human race
Humming, she holds him to her chest
Feeding him the milk that will guarantee his ability
To overpower the others he must compete against
His mouth forms around her
Extracting a liquid that warms his flesh
And causes him to make an unexpected sound
As she pats his back and lays him down again
Giving the carousel-world above his head a spin
The colors distracting him from his intellectual work
As the pure beauty of colors is overtaking
Having his heart feel uncaring to what will become of him
When his bones grow and his mind develops
Becoming forced to dream
Overpowered each night by the subconscious
That plays for him again and again
The lost lullaby of his youth

Perfected
The page calls to him
As if it knew no other
Playfully begging to be filled again
Each recorded word
A perfected moment of poetics
Tense, tone, and emotion
Intermixed like tongue-locked, flesh-locked lovers
Sweeping up each other
In new and reinterpreted sweet nothings
Her skin, his destined place of worship
The beauty of their togetherness
Captured as she lays herself down for his taking
As if he were a god of the sky
And the ancient world she heard about
In childhood stories told by her mother
Recalling that any form of love between them
Will leave her immortal and eternally fought for
His love, turning to words, and petitions to the council
In hopes that he may return to the upper-world with her
Where they will live forever amongst the stars
Her eyes open to a new lifestyle where mortal worries
Become fickle and blissfulness is taken in with each breath
Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s becoming no longer a thought of wrath or love or nonexistence
Rendered now to be an another passerby seen
When crossing the galaxy arm-in-arm
With oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beloved
She is astounded by the way of life
That he seems to meet with commonness and normalcy
The entirety of her being overtaken each time she breathes in
Feeling nothing but joy rush through her body
Turning the memories of her old life
Into a mockery of what life can truly be, if perfected
She half-expects to wake on the dirt of the ground
A dream and deep sleep having worked its magic upon her feeble mind
Yet as they circle the sun and move towards a red planet
He turns to her and asks if she minds stopping for a moment
So that he may sit to compose a new verse in her name
Leaving words to have read and remembered by all those who have limited time
And only fantasize as to what it means to live amongst the stars
Discovering the creator of heaven and earth
To be a fellow god, a passerby, who can go unnoticed
When walking arm-in-arm with his beloved

A Leper Made King
Handless, he rises to the podium
Speaking of future days
Where water will lap against their skin
As if it were falling rain
And the small and able-bodied servants
Respectfully silent to their disfigured masters
Have become the blackened people of disgust and avoidance
Their perfectly crafted bodies gone to waste
Working tediously in the dirt, on hands and knees
Reaping the produce of their masters’ vegetation
While being spit upon by the now free, cruel-hearted rulers
Who speak disgustedly of the new untouchables
Who are without mind, unable to understand how the tables were turned
And the lepers of the world who suffered millenniums of misery
Suddenly grew backbones, walking slowly and steadily
To their rightful place, striking down the powerful
With illogical fear concerning the loss of limbs
And becoming all that they made sure to separate themselves from
Pulling the tight weeds from the ground
One untouchable thinks of his days of superiority
Of when he was able to think and spit freely
Knowing that as long as he was not touched by a leper
They could do no harm to him
Yet now, his fingers shake as they uproot the vegetation properly
As any mistakes or improper pulling is met with lashes
His forefathers’ each hanging in a darkened cell
Taught the cruelties that they uncaringly enforced upon those
Who were already cursed and disfigured by the will of the maker
Their simple-minds unable to discern why one would treat a leper
Any differently than they did an unwanted creature
Trying to get its fill of sweet nectars from foods it did nothing to grow
A leper’s being nothing more than a parasite
Easily disciplined or disposed of
Eyeless, he rises again
Speaking into the darkness
Words that would bring about change
If all his comrades had not fallen already
To a distempered sword
Belonging to a child who fearfully dreamt
Of an uprising
And refused to see the day
When a leper would become king

Hours of Wealth
He fell asleep
With no desire to wake
Until the poison in his heart
Had melted away into a dream within a dream
A subconscious thought had by the mind
Of what tragic love would have been
Had he desired to walk that path in real life
Where what is done has consequence
And a heart forced to break itself
Must face the hours of wealth
Brought from separating the soul from its mate
Each day awakening fevering and pained
All possible accomplishments and goals
Void of their value
Smiles and happiness seeming as meaningless as the vows that still force him from sleep
And make him look again at his reflection
Questioning what love is
And why the heart tortures itself with such sadistic yearnings
He stares at the sickened body reflected in the mirror
Only to see
The endlessness of a day
He has spent years attempting to escape
Praying for a new sun
To fall upon his eyes
And waken him from the bitter sleep
Of nightmares that crossed over to a realm
Where they did not belong
His mind wanders
To the possibility of survival
Of coming to a time where he is all right
And his heart and soulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hatred for each other
Is overcome by the attainment of something greater
An unthought-of and almost forgotten musing
Planted deep within the roots of his blissfulness
A drug-like happiness moving through him
Promising to never leave him
And as he begins to welcome the feelings of joy
The smallest remaining trace of doubt
Stirs within him
Reminding him that it is better to search for neutrality
Than fall back under a spell that will leave him
With hours of wealth and an unrecognizable reflection